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134-732: The Chinese classics or canonical texts are the works of Chinese literature authored prior to the establishment of the imperial Qin dynasty in 221 BC. Prominent examples include the Four Books and Five Classics in the Neo-Confucian tradition, themselves an abridgment of the Thirteen Classics . The Chinese classics used a form of written Chinese consciously imitated by later authors, now known as Classical Chinese . A common Chinese word for "classic" ( 經 ; 经 ; jīng ) literally means ' warp thread ', in reference to

268-657: A broader range of subject matter and was longer and more loosely structured than literary fiction. One of the masterpieces of Chinese vernacular fiction is the 18th-century domestic novel Dream of the Red Chamber . Chinese fiction was rooted in the official histories and such less formal works as A New Account of the Tales of the World and In Search of the Supernatural (4th and 5th centuries); Finest Flowers from

402-459: A distinctively descriptive and erudite fu form (not the same fu character as that used for the bureau of music) developed that has been called "rhyme-prose", a uniquely Han offshoot of Chinese poetry's tradition. Equally noteworthy is Music Bureau poetry ( yuefu ), collected and presumably refined popular lyrics from folk music. The end of the Han witnesses a resurgence of the shi poetry, with

536-475: A few hundred songs became standard templates for poems with distinctive and variously set meters. The free and expressive style of Song high culture has been contrasted with majestic Tang poems by centuries of subsequent critics who engage in fierce arguments over which dynasty had the best poetry. Additional musical influences contributed to the Yuan dynasty 's (1279–1368) distinctive qu opera culture and spawned

670-477: A final editorial round of decisions for elimination or inclusion in the received version of the Poetry . As with all great literary works of ancient China, the Poetry has been annotated and commented on continuously throughout history, as well as in this case providing a model to inspire future poetic works. Various traditions concern the gathering of the compiled songs and the editorial selection from these make up

804-562: A new bourgeoisie, implementing class struggle within the party itself. Literature of the period reflected both strands of class struggle. Local government bureaus and work units composed cultural works such as songs and dramas in an effort to overturn traditional cultural preferences for early marriage, large families, and sons over daughters . Academic Sarah Mellors Rodriguez writes that though these works of birth planning propaganda may seem trite to modern audiences, their themes spoke directly to widespread concerns among Chinese people at

938-407: A nice dinner. The Song versus Tang debate continues through the centuries. While China's later imperial period does not seem to have broken new ground for innovative approaches to poetry, picking through its vast body of preserved works remains a scholarly challenge, so new treasures may yet be restored from obscurity. Early Chinese prose was deeply influenced by the great philosophical writings of

1072-546: A poem would by the time of Tang poetry be one of the rules to distinguish the old style poetry from the new, regulated style . The works in the Classic of Poetry vary in their lyrical qualities, which relates to the musical accompaniment with which they were in their early days performed. The songs from the "Hymns" and "Eulogies", which are the oldest material in the Poetry , were performed to slow, heavy accompaniment from bells, drums, and stone chimes. However, these and

1206-580: A protege of Lu Xun who, along with his wife Mei Zhi , did not toe the Party line on literature. Socialist realism became the uniform style, and many Soviet works were translated. The ability to satirize and expose the evils in contemporary society that had made writers useful to the Chinese Communist Party before its accession to power was no longer welcomed. Party cultural leaders such as Zhou Yang used Mao's call to have literature "serve

1340-608: A refined technique on the part of the poets". These traditional allegories of politics and morality are no longer seriously followed by any modern readers in China or elsewhere. The Odes became an important and controversial force, influencing political, social and educational phenomena. During the struggle between Confucian, Legalist , and other schools of thought, the Confucians used the Shijing to bolster their viewpoint. On

1474-487: A set collection, and to be called collectively the "Five Classics". Several of the texts were already prominent by the Warring States period , but the literature culture at the time did not lend itself to clear boundaries between works, so a high degree of variance between individual witnesses of the same title was common, as well as considerable intertextuality and cognate chapters between different titles. Mencius ,

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1608-459: A strong caesura , producing a driving and dramatic rhythm. Both the Shijing and the Chuci have remained influential throughout Chinese history. During the greater part of China's first great period of unification, begun with the short-lived Qin dynasty (221 BC – 206 BC) and followed by the centuries-long Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD), the shi form of poetry underwent little innovation. But

1742-458: Is Li Bai (701–762) also pronounced and written as Li Bo, who worked in all major styles, both the more free old style verse ( gutishi ) as well as the tonally regulated new style verse ( jintishi ). Regardless of genre, Tang poets notably strove to perfect a style in which poetic subjects are exposed and evident, often without directly referring to the emotional thrust at hand. The poet Du Fu (712–770) excelled at regulated verse and use of

1876-432: Is Eileen Chang. Though often said to be less successful than their counterparts in fiction writing, poets also experimented with the vernacular in new poetic forms, such as free verse and the sonnet. Given that there was no tradition of writing poetry in the vernacular, these experiments were more radical than those in fiction writing and also less easily accepted by the reading public. Modern poetry flourished especially in

2010-608: Is a wealth of early Chinese literature dating from the Hundred Schools of Thought that occurred during the Eastern Zhou dynasty (770–256 BC). The most important of these include the Classics of Confucianism , of Daoism , of Mohism , of Legalism , as well as works of military science and Chinese history . Note that, except for the books of poems and songs, most of this literature is philosophical and didactic; there

2144-630: Is generally as "poem", "song", or "ode". Before its elevation as a canonical classic, the Classic of Poetry ( Shi jing ) was known as the Three Hundred Songs or the Songs . The Classic of Poetry contains the oldest chronologically authenticated Chinese poems. The majority of the Odes date to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), and were drawn from around provinces and cities in

2278-539: Is in doubt. Another early text was the political strategy book of the Zhan Guo Ce , compiled between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC, with partial amounts of the text found amongst the 2nd century BC tomb site at Mawangdui . The oldest extant dictionary in China is the Erya , dated to the 3rd century BC, anonymously written but with later commentary by the historian Guo Pu (276–324). Other early dictionaries include

2412-485: Is little in the way of fiction. However, these texts maintained their significance through both their ideas and their prose style. The Confucian works in particular have been of high importance to Chinese culture and history, as a set of works known as the Four Books and Five Classics were, in the 12th century AD, chosen as the basis for the Imperial examination for any government post. These nine books therefore became

2546-427: Is strikingly concerned with the contemporary: social problems, historical upheaval, changing ethical values, etc. In this sense, late Qing fiction is modern. Important novelists of the period include Wu Woyao (吳沃堯) (1866–1910), Li Boyuan (李伯元) (1867–1906), Liu E (劉鶚) (1857–1909), and Zeng Pu (曾樸) (1872–1935). The late Qing also saw a "revolution in poetry" (詩界革命), which promoted experimentation with new forms and

2680-460: Is traditionally credited with editing the Shijing . Its stately verses are usually composed of couplets with lines of four characters each (or four syllables, as Chinese characters are monosyllabic), and a formal structure of end rhymes. Many of these early poems establish the later tradition of starting with a description of nature that leads into emotionally expressive statements, known as bi , xing , or sometime bixing . Associated with what

2814-576: The Biographies of the Immortals , a collection of Taoist hagiographies and hymns. Liu Xiang was also a poet, being credited with the " Nine Laments " that appears in the Chu Ci . The works edited and compiled by Liu Xiang include: This work was continued by his son, Liu Xin , who finally completed the task after his father's death. The transmitted corpus of these classical texts all derives from

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2948-834: The Classic of Poetry and the Book of Documents , which meant that these texts would have been exempted, and that the Book of Rites and the Zuo Zhuan did not contain the glorification of defeated feudal states which the First Emperor gave as his reason for destroying them. Nylan further suggests that the story might be based on the fact that the Qin palace was razed in 207 BC and many books were undoubtedly lost at that time. Martin Kern adds that Qin and early Han writings frequently cite

3082-606: The Dao De Jing , the Zhuangzi , and the Liezi . Later authors combined Daoism with Confucianism and Legalism, such as Liu An (2nd century BC), whose Huainanzi ( The Philosophers of Huai-nan ) also added to the fields of geography and topography . Among the classics of military science, The Art of War by Sun Tzu (6th century BC) was perhaps the first to outline guidelines for effective international diplomacy . It

3216-655: The Fangyan by Yang Xiong (53 BC – 18 AD) and the Shuowen Jiezi by Xu Shen (58–147 AD). One of the largest was the Kangxi Dictionary compiled by 1716 under the auspices of the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1661–1722); it provides definitions for over 47,000 characters. Although court records and other independent records existed beforehand, the definitive work in early Chinese historical writing

3350-669: The Taiping Yulan (983), the Wenyuan Yinghua (986), and the Cefu Yuangui (1013). Although these Song dynasty Chinese encyclopedias featured millions of written Chinese characters each, their aggregate size paled in comparison to the later Yongle Encyclopedia (1408) of the Ming dynasty, which contained a total of 50 million Chinese characters. Even this size was trumped by later Qing dynasty encyclopedias, such as

3484-667: The Zizhi Tongjian , presented to Emperor Shenzong of Song in 1084 AD. The overall scope of the historiographical tradition in China is termed the Twenty-Four Histories , created for each successive Chinese dynasty up until the Ming dynasty (1368–1644); China's last dynasty, the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), is not included. Large encyclopedias were also produced in China through the ages. The Yiwen Leiju encyclopedia

3618-692: The sanqu form of individual poems based on it. Classical Chinese poetry composition became a conventional skill of the well-educated throughout the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties. Over a million poems have been preserved, including those by women, such as Dong Xiaowan and Liu Rushi , and by many other diverse voices. Painter-poets, such as Shen Zhou (1427–1509), Tang Yin (1470–1524), Wen Zhengming (1470–1559), and Yun Shouping (1633–1690), created worthy conspicuous poems as they combined art, poetry and calligraphy with brush on paper. Poetry composition competitions were socially common, as depicted in novels, for example over dessert after

3752-588: The Analects recounts that Confucius' son Kong Li told the story: "The Master once stood by himself, and I hurried to seek teaching from him. He asked me, 'You've studied the Odes?' I answered, 'Not yet.' He replied, 'If you have not studied the Odes, then I have nothing to say.'" According to Han tradition, the Poetry and other classics were targets of the burning of books in 213 BCE under Qin Shi Huang , and

3886-645: The Classic of Poetry often focuses on doing linguistic reconstruction and research in Old Chinese by analyzing the rhyme schemes in the Odes , which show vast differences when read in modern Mandarin Chinese . Although preserving more Old Chinese syllable endings than Mandarin, Modern Cantonese and Min Nan are also quite different from the Old Chinese language represented in the Odes. C.H. Wang refers to

4020-467: The Classic of Poetry . In 2015, the Anhui University purchased a group of looted manuscripts, among which is one of the oldest extant scribal copies of the Classic of Poetry (at least part of it). The manuscript has been published in the first volume of this collection of manuscripts, Anhui daxue cang Zhanguo zhujian ( 安徽大學藏戰國竹簡 ). The Confucian school eventually came to consider

4154-421: The Hundred Schools of Thought (770–221 BC). The works of Mozi , Mencius , and Zhuang Zhou contain well-reasoned, carefully developed discourses that reveal much stronger organization and style than their predecessors. Mozi's polemic prose was built on solid and effective methodological reasoning. Mencius contributed elegant diction and, like Zhuang Zhou, relied on comparisons, anecdotes, and allegories. By

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4288-536: The Odes were a valuable focus for knowledge and self-cultivation, as recorded in an anecdote in the Analects : 詩可以興，可以觀，可以群，可以怨。邇之事父，遠之事君。多識於鳥獸草木之名。 The Odes can be a source of inspiration and a basis for evaluation; they can help you to come together with others, as well as to properly express complaints. In the home, they teach you about how to serve your father, and in public life they teach you about how to serve your lord. They also broadly acquaint you with

4422-448: The Odes , though frequently on simple, rustic subjects, have traditionally been saddled with extensive, elaborate allegorical meanings that assigned moral or political meaning to the smallest details of each line. The popular songs were seen as good keys to understanding the troubles of the common people, and were often read as allegories, and complaints against lovers were seen as complaints against faithless rulers. Confucius taught that

4556-575: The Poetry ( 毛詩傳 Máo shī zhuàn ), attributed to an obscure scholar named Máo Hēng ( 毛亨 ) who lived during the 2nd or 3rd centuries BCE, was not officially recognized until the reign of Emperor Ping (1 BCE to 6 CE). However, during the Eastern Han period, the Mao Poetry gradually became the primary version. Proponents of the Mao Poetry said that its text was descended from the first generation of Confucius' students, and as such should be

4690-479: The Poetry can be divided into two main sections: the "Airs of the States", and the "Eulogies" and "Hymns". The "Airs of the States" are shorter lyrics in simple language that are generally ancient folk songs which record the voice of the common people. They often speak of love and courtship, longing for an absent lover, soldiers on campaign, farming and housework, and political satire and protest. The first song of

4824-455: The Shijing does not specify the names of authors in association with the contained works, both traditional commentaries and modern scholarship have put forth hypotheses on authorship. The "Golden Coffer" chapter of the Book of Documents says that the poem "Owl" ( 鴟鴞 ) in the "Odes of Bin" was written by the Duke of Zhou . Many of the songs appear to be folk songs and other compositions used in

4958-531: The Song dynasty to serve as general introduction to Confucian thought, and they were, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, made the core of the official curriculum for the civil service examinations. They are: The official curriculum of the imperial examination system from the Song dynasty onward are the Thirteen Classics . In total, these works total to more than 600,000 characters that must be memorized in order to pass

5092-518: The Yan'an Rectification Movement . The Yan'an Talks articulated the view that socialist literature should not merely reflect existing culture, but should help culturally produce the consciousness of a new society. Mao articulated five independent although related categories of creative consideration for socialist cultural production: (1) class stand, (2) attitude, (3) audience, (4) work style, and (5) popularization/massification. The Yan'an Talks would become

5226-623: The Zhongyuan area. A final section of 5 "Eulogies of Shang" purports to be ritual songs of the Shang dynasty as handed down by their descendants in the state of Song , but is generally considered quite late in date. According to the Eastern Han scholar Zheng Xuan , the latest material in the Shijing was the song "Tree-Stump Grove" ( 株林 ) in the "Odes of Chen", dated to the middle of the Spring and Autumn period ( c. 700 BCE). The content of

5360-519: The novel as early as the Song dynasty . The novel as an extended prose narrative which realistically creates a believable world of its own evolved in China and in Europe from the 14th–18th centuries, though a little earlier in China. Chinese audiences were more interested in history and Chinese authors generally did not present their works as fictional. Readers appreciated relative optimism, moral humanism, relative emphasis on group behavior, and welfare of

5494-407: The " shi " style for much of Chinese history. One of the characteristics of the poems in the Classic of Poetry is that they tend to possess "elements of repetition and variation". This results in an "alteration of similarities and differences in the formal structure: in successive stanzas, some lines and phrases are repeated verbatim, while others vary from stanza to stanza". Characteristically,

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5628-1023: The "Airs of the States", " Fishhawk " ( Guān jū 關雎 ), is a well-known example of the category. Confucius commented on it, and it was traditionally given special interpretive weight. The fishhawks sing gwan-gwan On sandbars of the stream. Gentle maiden, pure and fair, Fit pair for a prince. Watercress grows here and there, Right and left we gather it. Gentle maiden, pure and fair, Wanted waking and sleep. Wanting, sought her, had her not, Waking, sleeping, thought of her, On and on he thought of her, He tossed from one side to another. Watercress grows here and there, Right and left we pull it. Gentle maiden, pure and fair, With harps we bring her company. Watercress grows here and there, Right and left we pick it out. Gentle maiden, pure and fair, With bells and drums do her delight. 關關雎鳩 在河之洲 窈窕淑女 君子好逑 參差荇菜 左右流之 窈窕淑女 寤寐求之 求之不得 寤寐思服 悠哉悠哉 輾轉反側 參差荇菜 左右采之 窈窕淑女 琴瑟友之 參差荇菜 左右芼之 窈窕淑女 鐘鼓樂之 On

5762-485: The "Eulogies" consist of a single stanza, and the "Court Hymns" exhibit wide variation in the number of stanzas and their lengths. Almost all of the "Airs", however, consist of three stanzas, with four-line stanzas being most common. Although a few rhyming couplets occur, the standard pattern in such four-line stanzas required a rhyme between the second and fourth lines. Often the first or third lines would rhyme with these, or with each other. This style later became known as

5896-478: The 1930s, in the hands of poets like Zhu Xiang (朱湘), Dai Wangshu , Li Jinfa (李金發), Wen Yiduo , and Ge Xiao (葛蕭). Other poets, even those among the May Fourth radicals (e.g., Yu Dafu ), continued to write poetry in classical styles. May Fourth radicalism, combined with changes in the education system, made possible the emergence of a large group of women writers. While there had been women writers in

6030-564: The 3rd century BC, these writers had developed a simple, concise and economical style that served as a model literary form for over two millennia. These were written in Classical Chinese , which mostly represented the spoken language during the Spring and Autumn period . During the Tang dynasty , the ornate, artificial style of prose developed in previous periods was replaced by a simple, direct, and forceful prose based on examples from

6164-541: The Classics, especially the Documents and the Classic of Poetry , which would not have been possible if they had been burned, as reported. The Five Classics ( 五經 ; Wǔjīng ) are five pre-Qin texts that became part of the state-sponsored curriculum during the Western Han dynasty , which adopted Confucianism as its official ideology. It was during this period that the texts first began to be considered together as

6298-586: The Communists gradually nationalized the publishing industry, centralized the book distribution system, and brought writers under institutional control through the Writers Union. A system of strict censorship was implemented, with Mao's Yan'an Talks as the guiding force. Periodic literary campaigns targeted figures such as Hu Shih and other figures from the New Culture period, especially Hu Feng ,

6432-556: The Confucian Classics and their secondary literature; history; philosophy; and poetry. There are sub-categories within each branch, but due to the small number of pre-Qin works in the Classics, History and Poetry branches, the sub-categories are only reproduced for the Philosophy branch. The philosophical typology of individual pre-imperial texts has in every case been applied retroactively, rather than consciously within

6566-567: The Confucian side, the Shijing became a foundational text which informed and validated literature, education, and political affairs. The Legalists, on their side, attempted to suppress the Shijing by violence, after the Legalist philosophy was endorsed by the Qin dynasty , prior to their final triumph over the neighboring states: the suppression of Confucian and other thought and literature after

6700-547: The English phrase low-brow fiction. In the late 1920s and 1930s, literary journals and societies espousing various artistic theories proliferated. Among the major writers of the period were Guo Moruo (1892–1978), a poet, historian, essayist, and critic; Mao Dun (1896–1981), the first of the novelists to emerge from the League of Left-Wing Writers and one whose work reflected the revolutionary struggle and disillusionment of

6834-550: The Grand Historian was the first work to directly attribute the work to Confucius. Subsequent Confucian tradition held that the Shijing collection was edited by Confucius from a larger 3,000-piece collection to its traditional 305-piece form. This claim is believed to reflect an early Chinese tendency to relate all of the Five Classics in some way or another to Confucius, who by the 1st century BCE had become

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6968-518: The Hundred Schools and the Han dynasty , the period in which the great historical works of Sima Tan and Sima Qian were published. This neoclassical style dominated prose writing for the next 800 years. It was exemplified in the work of Han Yu (768–824), a master essayist and strong advocate of a return to Confucian orthodoxy; Han Yu was later listed as one of the "Eight Great Prose Masters of

7102-692: The Qi Poetry ( 齊詩 Qí shī ) and the Han Poetry ( 韓詩 Hán shī ) were officially recognized with chairs at the Imperial Academy during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han (156–87 BCE). Until the later years of the Eastern Han period, the dominant version of the Poetry was the Lu Poetry , named after the state of Lu , and founded by Shen Pei, a student of a disciple of the Warring States period philosopher Xunzi . The Mao Tradition of

7236-502: The Qin victories and the start of Burning of Books and Burying of Scholars era, starting in 213 BCE, extended to attempt to prohibit the Shijing . As the idea of allegorical expression grew, when kingdoms or feudal leaders wished to express or validate their own positions, they would sometimes couch the message within a poem, or by allusion. This practice became common among educated Chinese in their personal correspondences and spread to Japan and Korea as well. Modern scholarship on

7370-556: The Red Chamber . Many of these writers became important as administrators of artistic and literary policy after 1949. Most of those authors who were still alive during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) were either purged or forced to submit to public humiliation. The League of Left-Wing Writers founded in 1930 included Lu Xun among its leadership. By 1932 it had adopted the Soviet doctrine of socialist realism ; that is,

7504-533: The Republican era, Butterfly fiction would reach many more readers than its "progressive" counterpart. In the course of the New Culture Movement during the 1910s and 1920s decades, the vernacular language largely displaced the classical in all areas of literature and writing. Literary reformers Hu Shih (1891–1962) and Chen Duxiu (1880–1942) declared the classical language "dead" and promoted

7638-667: The Snowy Forest (Lin Hai Xue Yuan 林海雪原) by Qu Bo , Keep the Red Flag Flying (Hong Qi Pu 紅旗譜) by Liang Bin 梁斌, The Red Sun (Hong Ri 紅日) by Wu Qiang 吳強, and Red Crag by Luo Guangbin 羅廣斌 and Yang Yiyan (楊益言). During the 1960s, the Maoist view of class struggle focused on challenging revisionism within society through the socialist education movement , and, motivated by concerns that Party bureaucrats might become

7772-486: The Tang and Song". The Song dynasty saw the rise in popularity of "travel record literature" ( youji wenxue ). Travel literature combined both diary and narrative prose formats, it was practised by seasoned travellers like Fan Chengda (1126–1193) and Xu Xiake (1587–1641), and can be seen in the example of Su Shi 's Record of Stone Bell Mountain . After the 14th century, vernacular fiction became popular, at least outside of court circles. Vernacular fiction covered

7906-532: The World of Letters , a 10th-century compilation of earlier works; Great Tang Records on the Western Regions completed by a pilgrim to India named Xuanzang in 646; Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang , the best known collection of Literary Chinese chuanqi from the Tang dynasty; and the Taiping Guangji , which preserved the corpus of these Tang dynasty tales. There was a range of less formal works either oral or using oral conventions, such as bianwen , pingshu , and huaben , which formed background to

8040-482: The alleged Qin objective of strengthening Legalism, the traditional account is anachronistic in that Legalism was not yet a defined category of thought during the Qin period, and the "schools of thought" model is no longer considered to be an accurate portrayal of the intellectual history of pre-imperial China. Michael Nylan observes that despite its mythic significance, the " burning of books and burying of scholars " legend does not bear close scrutiny. Nylan suggests that

8174-418: The ancient virtuous rulers. Li Si believed that if the people were to read these works they were likely to invoke the past and become dissatisfied with the present. The reason for opposing various schools of philosophy was that they advocated political ideas often incompatible with the totalitarian regime. Modern historians doubt the details of the story, which first appeared more than a century later. Regarding

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8308-478: The anonymous 19 Old Poems . This collection reflects the emergence of a distinctive five-character line that later became shi poetry's most common line length. From the Jian'an reign period (196 – 220 AD) onward, the five-character line became a focus for innovations in style and theme. The Cao family, rulers of the Wei dynasty (220 – 265 AD) during the post-Han Three Kingdoms period, distinguished themselves as poets by writing poems filled with sympathy for

8442-413: The anthology as the 300 Poems ( shi ). The Odes first became known as a jīng , or a "classic book", in the canonical sense, as part of the Han dynasty 's official adoption of Confucianism as the guiding principle of Chinese society. The same word shi later became a generic term for poetry. In English, lacking an exact equivalent for the Chinese, the translation of the word shi in this regard

8576-454: The authoritative version. Xu Shen 's influential dictionary Shuowen Jiezi , written in the 2nd-century CE, quotes almost exclusively from the Mao Poetry . Finally, the renowned Eastern Han scholar Zheng Xuan used the Mao Poetry as the basis for his annotated 2nd-century edition of the Poetry . Zheng Xuan's edition of the Mao text was itself the basis of the "Right Meaning of the Mao Poetry " ( 毛詩正義 Máo shī zhèngyì ) which became

8710-452: The center of the educational system. They have been grouped into two categories: the Five Classics , allegedly commented and edited by Confucius , and the Four Books . The Five Classics are: The Four Books are: Other important philosophical works include the Mohist Mozi , which taught "inclusive love" as both an ethical and social principle, and Hanfeizi , one of the central Legalist texts. Important Daoist classics include

8844-453: The classic text of the Odes : "Royal Officials' Collecting Songs" ( 王官采詩 ) is recorded in the Book of Han , and "Master Confucius Deletes Songs" ( 孔子刪詩 ) refers to Confucius and his mention in the Records of the Grand Historian , where it says from originally some 3,000 songs and poems in a previously extant " Odes " that Confucius personally selected the "300" which he felt best conformed to traditional ritual propriety, thus producing

8978-401: The command of the emperor, Liu Xiang (77–6 BC) compiled the first catalogue of the imperial library, the Abstracts ( 別錄 ; 别录 ; Bielu ), and is the first known editor of the Classic of Mountains and Seas , which was finished by his son. Liu also edited collections of stories and biographies, the Biographies of Exemplary Women . He has long erroneously been credited with compiling

9112-442: The concept of youmo (humor), which he used in trenchant criticism of China's political and cultural situation before leaving for the United States. Themes of "revolution plus love" became a left-wing literary fashion during the 1930s, although it was also criticized from the left including by Mao Dun. In this narrative formula, the story begins with conflict between the revolutionary mission and romantic love, followed by calls for

9246-426: The contemporary reign of Emperor Wu of Han while retaining an objective and non-biased standpoint. This was often difficult for the official dynastic historians, who used historical works to justify the reign of the current dynasty. He influenced the written works of many Chinese historians, including the works of Ban Gu and Ban Zhao in the 1st and 2nd centuries, and even Sima Guang 's 11th-century compilation of

9380-415: The court ceremonies of the aristocracy. Furthermore, many of the songs, based on internal evidence, appear to be written either by women, or from the perspective of a female persona . The repeated emphasis on female authorship of poetry in the Shijing was made much of in the process of attempting to give the poems of the women poets of the Ming - Qing period canonical status. Despite the impersonality of

9514-406: The cultivation of jing , 'essence' in Chinese medicine. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Four Books and Five Classics were the subjects of mandatory study by those Confucian scholars who wished to take the imperial examination and needed to pass them in order to become scholar-officials . Any political discussion was full of references to this background, and one could not become part of

9648-419: The day-to-day struggles of soldiery and the common people. Taoist philosophy became a different, common theme for other poets, and a genre emphasizing true feeling emerged led by Ruan Ji (210–263). The landscape genre of Chinese nature poetry emerged under the brush of Xie Lingyun (385–433), as he innovated distinctively descriptive and complementary couplets composed of five-character lines. A farmland genre

9782-528: The description of objects. Reunified China's Tang dynasty (618–907) high culture set a high point for many things, including poetry. Various schools of Buddhism (a religion from India) flourished as represented by the Chan (or Zen) beliefs of Wang Wei (701–761). His quatrains ( jueju ) describing natural scenes are world-famous examples of excellence, each couplet conventionally containing about two distinct images or thoughts per line. Tang poetry's big star

9916-477: The earliest layer of Chinese literature was influenced by oral traditions of different social and professional provenance: cult and lay musical practices ( Shijing ), divination ( Yi jing ), astronomy, exorcism. An attempt at tracing the genealogy of Chinese literature to religious spells and incantations (the six zhu 六祝, as presented in the "Da zhu" chapter of the Rites of Zhou ) was made by Liu Shipei. There

10050-422: The emergence of spoken drama. Most outstanding among playwrights of the day are Ouyang Yuqian , Hong Shen , Tian Han , and Cao Yu . More popular than this Western-style drama, however, was Peking opera, raised to new artistic heights by the likes of Mei Lanfang . In these decades, mass-appeal fiction which elites deemed culturally insignificant became known as "butterfly fiction," a label largely equivalent to

10184-413: The examination. Moreover, these works are accompanied by extensive commentary and annotation, containing approximately 300 million characters by some estimates. It is often difficult or impossible to precisely date pre-Qin works beyond their being "pre-Qin", a period of 1000 years. Information in ancient China was often by oral tradition and passed down from generations before so was rarely written down, so

10318-450: The failure of the ruling dynasty to ensure the prosperity of their subjects. The people's folksongs were deemed to be the best gauge of their feelings and conditions, and thus indicative of whether the nobility was ruling according to the mandate of Heaven or not. Accordingly, the songs were collected from the various regions, converted from their diverse regional dialects into standard literary language, and presented accompanied with music at

10452-696: The first emperor of China , unified China in 221 BC, his chancellor Li Si suggested suppressing intellectual discourse to unify thought and political opinion. This was alleged to have destroyed philosophical treatises of the Hundred Schools of Thought , with the goal of strengthening the official Qin governing philosophy of Legalism . According to the Shiji , three categories of books were viewed by Li Si to be most dangerous politically. These were poetry, history (especially historical records of other states than Qin), and philosophy. The ancient collection of poetry and historical records contained many stories concerning

10586-618: The imperially authorized text and commentary on the Poetry in 653 CE. By the 5th-century, the Lu, Qi, and Han traditions had died out, leaving only the Mao Poetry , which has become the received text in use today. Only isolated fragments of the Lu text survive, among the remains of the Xiping Stone Classics . The Book of Odes has been a revered Confucian classic since the Han dynasty, and has been studied and memorized by centuries of scholars in China. The individual songs of

10720-706: The incorporation of new registers of language. However, the poetry scene was still dominated by the adherents to the Tongguang School (named after the Tongzhi and Guangxu reigns of the Qing), whose leaders— Chen Yan (陳衍), Chen Sanli (陳三立), Zheng Xiaoxu (鄭孝胥), and Shen Zengzhi (沈曾植)—promoted a Song style in the manner of Huang Tingjian. These poets would become the objects of scorn by New Culturalists like Hu Shih , who saw their work as overly allusive, artificial, and divorced from contemporary reality. In drama,

10854-560: The insistence that art must concentrate on contemporary events in a realistic way, exposing the ills of nonsocialist society and promoting a glorious future under communism . Other styles of literature were at odds with the highly-political literature being promoted by the League. The " New Sensationists " (新感覺派)—a group of writers based in Shanghai who were influenced, to varying degrees, by Western and Japanese modernism—wrote fiction that

10988-413: The late 1920s; satirist and novelist Lao She (1899–1966); and Ba Jin (1904–2005), a novelist whose work was influenced by Ivan Turgenev and other Russian writers. In the 1930s Ba Jin produced a trilogy that depicted the struggle of modern youth against the age-old dominance of the Confucian family system. Comparison often is made between Jia (Family), one of the novels in the trilogy, and Dream of

11122-679: The late Qing saw the emergence of the new "civilized drama" (文明戲), a hybrid of Chinese operatic drama with Western-style spoken drama. Peking opera and "reformed Peking opera" were also popular at the time. The literary scene in the first few years before the collapse of the Qing in 1911 was dominated by popular love stories, some written in the classical language and some in the vernacular. This entertainment fiction would later be labeled " Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies " fiction by New Culturalists, who despised its lack of social engagement. Throughout much of

11256-462: The late imperial period and the late Qing, they had been few in number. These writers generally tackled domestic issues, such as relations between the sexes, family, friendship and war, Eileen Chang's writing uses the spatial specificities of the modern apartment as essential to the construction of a vision of life in wartime. But they were revolutionary in giving direct expression to female subjectivity. Ding Ling 's story Miss Sophia's Diary exposes

11390-510: The later actual musical scores or choreography which accompanied the Shijing poems have been lost. Nearly all of the songs in the Poetry are rhyming, with end rhyme, as well as frequent internal rhyming. While some of these verses still rhyme in modern varieties of Chinese, others had ceased to rhyme by the Middle Chinese period. For example, the eighth song ( 芣苢 Fú Yǐ ) has a tightly constrained structure implying rhymes between

11524-692: The latest date for the writing of the Guodian Chu Slips unearthed in a Hubei tomb in 1993. The Book of Documents included early information on geography in the Yu Gong chapter. The Bamboo Annals found in 281 AD in the tomb of the King of Wei, who was interred in 296 BC, provide another example; however, unlike the Zuo Zhuan , the authenticity of the early date of the Bamboo Annals

11658-488: The leading Confucian scholar of the time, regarded the Spring and Autumn Annals as being equally important as the semi-legendary chronicles of earlier periods. Up to the Western Han, authors would typically list the Classics in the order Poems-Documents-Rituals-Changes-Spring and Autumn. However, from the Eastern Han the default order instead became Changes-Documents-Poems-Rituals-Spring and Autumn. In 26 BCE, at

11792-556: The literati—or even a military officer in some periods—without having memorized them. Generally, children first memorized the Chinese characters of the Three Character Classic and Hundred Family Surnames and they then went on to memorize the other classics. The literate elite therefore shared a common culture and set of values. According to Sima Qian 's Records of the Grand Historian , after Qin Shi Huang ,

11926-474: The major works of philosophy and history written during the Axial Age . The Han (202 BC – 220 AD) and Tang (618–907 AD) dynasties were considered golden ages of poetry, while the Song (960–1279) and Yuan (1271–1368) were notable for their lyrics ( ci ), essays, dramas, and plays. During the Ming and Qing , mature novels were written in written vernacular Chinese , an evolution from

12060-477: The many officers, Holding fast to the virtue of King Wen . Responding in praise to the one in Heaven, They hurry swiftly within the temple. Greatly illustrious, greatly honored, May [King Wen] never be weary of [us] men. 於穆清廟 肅雝顯相 濟濟多士 秉文之德 對越在天 駿奔走在廟 不顯不承 無射於人斯 Whether the various Shijing poems were folk songs or not, they "all seem to have passed through the hands of men of letters at

12194-528: The minor scholar-official Song Yingxing (1587–1666) and his Tiangong Kaiwu . The rich tradition of Chinese poetry began with two influential collections. In northern China, the Shijing or Classic of Poetry (approx. 11th–7th century BC) comprises over 300 poems in a variety of styles ranging from those with a strong suggestion of folk music to ceremonial hymns. The word shi has the basic meaning of poem or poetry, as well as its use in criticism to describe one of China's lyrical poetic genres. Confucius

12328-478: The model of sages and was believed to have maintained a cultural connection to the early Zhou dynasty. This view is now generally discredited, as the Zuo zhuan records that the Classic of Poetry already existed in a definitive form when Confucius was just a young child. In works attributed to him, Confucius comments upon the Classic of Poetry in such a way as to indicate that he holds it in great esteem. A story in

12462-610: The names of birds, beasts, plants, and trees. The extensive allegorical traditions associated with the Odes were theorized by Herbert Giles to have begun in the Warring States period as a justification for Confucius ' focus upon such a seemingly simple and ordinary collection of verses. These elaborate, far-fetched interpretations seem to have gone completely unquestioned until the 12th century, when scholar Zheng Qiao ( 鄭樵 , 1104–1162) first wrote his scepticism of them. European sinologists like Giles and Marcel Granet ignored these traditional interpretations in their analysis of

12596-495: The national guideline for culture after the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Consistent with political goals of mobilizing the masses, literary depictions of Party cadres became important. Literature of the period represented good cadres as those who took the lead on the road to socialism while adopting a theme of antibureaucratism to criticize cadres who sought special privileges. After coming to power in 1949,

12730-492: The officials returned from their missions, the king was said to have observed them himself in an effort to understand the current condition of the common people. The well-being of the people was of special concern to the Zhou because of their ideological position that the right to rule was based on the benignity of the rulers to the people in accordance with the will of Heaven , and that this Heavenly Mandate would be withdrawn upon

12864-660: The older the composition of the texts may not be in a chronological order as that which was arranged and presented by their attributed "authors". The below list is therefore organized in the order which is found in the Siku Quanshu ( Complete Library of the Four Treasuries ), the encyclopedic collation of the works found in the imperial library of the Qing dynasty under the Qianlong Emperor . The Siku Quanshu classifies all works into 4 top-level branches:

12998-407: The original meanings of the Odes . Granet, in his list of rules for properly reading the Odes , wrote that readers should "take no account of the standard interpretation", "reject in no uncertain terms the distinction drawn between songs evicting a good state of morals and songs attesting to perverted morality", and "[discard] all symbolic interpretations, and likewise any interpretation that supposes

13132-448: The other hand, songs in the two "Hymns" sections and the "Eulogies" section tend to be longer ritual or sacrificial songs, usually in the forms of courtly panegyrics and dynastic hymns which praise the founders of the Zhou dynasty. They also include hymns used in sacrificial rites and songs used by the aristocracy in their sacrificial ceremonies or at banquets. "Court Hymns" contains "Lesser Court Hymns" and "Major Court Hymns". Most of

13266-404: The parallel or syntactically matched lines within a specific poem share the same, identical words (or characters) to a large degree, as opposed to confining the parallelism between lines to using grammatical category matching of the words in one line with the other word in the same position in the corresponding line; but, not by using the same, identical word(s). Disallowing verbal repetition within

13400-531: The penultimate words (here shown in bold) of each pair of lines: The second and third stanzas still rhyme in modern Standard Chinese , with the rhyme words even having the same tone, but the first stanza does not rhyme in Middle Chinese or any modern variety. Such cases were attributed to lax rhyming practice until the late- Ming dynasty scholar Chen Di argued that the original rhymes had been obscured by sound change . Since Chen, scholars have analyzed

13534-545: The people" to mount attacks on " petty bourgeois idealism" and "humanitarianism". This conflict came to a head in the Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956–57). Mao Zedong initially encouraged writers to speak out against problems in the new society. Having learned the lessons of the anti-Hu Feng campaign, they were reluctant, but then a flurry of newspaper articles, films, and literary works drew attention to such problems as bureaucratism and authoritarianism within

13668-453: The poems were used by the aristocrats to pray for good harvests each year, worship gods, and venerate their ancestors. The authors of "Major Court Hymns" are nobles who were dissatisfied with the political reality. Therefore, they wrote poems not only related to the feast, worship, and epic but also to reflect the public feelings. Ah! Solemn is the clear temple, Reverent and concordant the illustrious assistants. Dignified, dignified are

13802-437: The poetic voice characteristic of the Songs , many of the poems are written from the perspective of various generic personalities. According to tradition, the method of collection of the various Shijing poems involved the appointment of officials, whose duties included documenting verses current from the various states which constituted the empire. Out of these many collected pieces, also according to tradition, Confucius made

13936-500: The preeminence of Literary Chinese patterned off the language of the Chinese classics . The introduction of widespread woodblock printing during the Tang and the invention of movable type printing by Bi Sheng (990–1051) during the Song rapidly spread written knowledge throughout China. Around the turn of the 20th century, the author Lu Xun (1881–1936) is considered an influential voice of vernacular Chinese literature. Formation of

14070-522: The printed the Complete Classics Collection of Ancient China (1726), which featured over 100 million written Chinese characters in over 800,000 pages, printed in 60 different copies using copper -metal Chinese movable type printing. Other great encyclopedic writers include the polymath scientist Shen Kuo (1031–1095) and his Dream Pool Essays , the agronomist and inventor Wang Zhen ( fl. 1290–1333) and his Nongshu , and

14204-402: The protagonists to devote themselves to revolution and set aside their personal feelings, and ultimately results in the couple working together for the revolution in a form of love itself. As described by academic David Der-Wei Wang , "[R]evolution plus love functioned both as a literary trope, titillating and sustaining a society's desire for self-reform, and as a political mandate, calling for

14338-472: The ranks of the party. Shocked at the level of discontent, Mao's Anti-Rightist Movement put large numbers of intellectuals through "thought reform" or sent them to labor camps. At the time of the Great Leap Forward (1957–59), the government increased its insistence on the use of socialist realism and combined with it so-called revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism. Class struggle

14472-546: The reason Han dynasty scholars charged the Qin with destroying the Confucian Five Classics was partly to "slander" the state they defeated and partly because Han scholars misunderstood the nature of the texts, for it was only after the founding of the Han that Sima Qian labeled the Five Classics as Confucian. Nylan also points out that the Qin court appointed classical scholars who were specialists on

14606-612: The redisposition of the social body in both public and personal spheres." During the Second Sino-Japanese War , there was a revival of writing classical-style poetry. The Chinese Communist Party had established a base after the Long March in Yan'an . In 1942, Mao Zedong gave a series of lectures called " Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Art and Literature " that clearly made literature subservient to politics via

14740-497: The rhyming patterns of the Poetry as crucial evidence for the reconstruction of Old Chinese phonology . Traditional scholarship of the Poetry identified three major literary devices employed in the songs: straightforward narrative ( fù 賦 ), explicit comparisons ( bǐ 比 ) and implied comparisons ( xìng 興 ). The poems of the Classic of Poetry tend to have certain typical patterns in both rhyme and rhythm, to make much use of imagery, often derived from nature. Although

14874-450: The royal Zhou court". In other words, they show an overall literary polish together with some general stylistic consistency. About 95% of lines in the Poetry are written in a four-syllable meter , with a slight caesura between the second and third syllables. Lines tend to occur in syntactically related couplets , with occasional parallelism, and longer poems are generally divided into similarly structured stanzas . All but six of

15008-430: The royal courts. The Classic of Poetry historically has a major place in the Four Books and Five Classics , the canonical works associated with Confucianism . Some pre-Qin dynasty texts, such as the Analects and a recently excavated manuscript from 300 BCE entitled "Confucius' Discussion of the Odes ", mention Confucius' involvement with the Classic of Poetry but Han dynasty historian Sima Qian 's Records of

15142-605: The seven-character line also contributed to the emerging posthumous fame of Du Fu, now ranked alongside Li Bai. The distinctively different ci poetry form began its development during the Tang as Central Asian and other musical influences flowed through its cosmopolitan society. China's Song dynasty (960–1279), another reunification era after a brief period of disunity, initiated a fresh high culture. Several of its greatest poets were capable government officials as well including Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072), Su Shi (1037–1101), and Wang Anshi (1021–1086). The ci form flourished as

15276-466: The seven-character line, writing denser poems with more allusions as he aged, experiencing hardship and writing about it. A parade of great Tang poets also includes Chen Zi'ang (661–702), Wang Zhihuan (688–742), Meng Haoran (689–740), Bai Juyi (772–846), Li He (790–816), Du Mu (803–852), Wen Tingyun (812–870), (listed chronologically) and Li Shangyin (813–858), whose poetry delights in allusions that often remain obscure, and whose emphasis on

15410-440: The society. With the rise of monetary economy and urbanization beginning in the Song dynasty, there was a growing professionalization of entertainment fostered by the spread of printing, the rise of literacy and education. In both China and Europe, the novel gradually became more autobiographical and serious in exploration of social, moral, and philosophical problems. Chinese fiction of the late Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty

15544-437: The songs had to be reconstructed largely from memory in the subsequent Han period. However the discovery of pre-Qin copies showing the same variation as Han texts, as well as evidence of Qin patronage of the Poetry , have led modern scholars to doubt this account. During the Han period there were three different versions of the Poetry which each belonged to different hermeneutic traditions. The Lu Poetry ( 魯詩 Lǔ shī ),

15678-549: The struggle women confronted in establishing their voices in a changing China. These Modern Girls were sometimes disillusioned with modernity. Male-authored works often portrayed the Modern Girl as a femme fatale who rejected chastity in favor of bodily pleasure and consumerism. The "New Woman" frequently emphasized nationalistic themes. Both of these archetypes appeared in literature dealing with debates over birth control and abortion in China . The 1920s and 1930s saw

15812-442: The techniques by which works of this period were bound into volumes. Texts may include shi ( 史 , ' histories ') zi ( 子 'master texts'), philosophical treatises usually associated with an individual and later systematized into schools of thought but also including works on agriculture, medicine , mathematics, astronomy , divination, art criticism, and other miscellaneous writings) and ji ( 集 'literary works') as well as

15946-449: The text itself. The categorization of works of these genera has been highly contentious, especially in modern times. Many modern scholars reject the continued usefulness of this model as a heuristic for understanding the shape of the intellectual landscape of the time. Chinese literature The history of Chinese literature extends thousands of years, and begins with the earliest recorded inscriptions, court archives, building to

16080-421: The thoughts and feelings of its female diarist in all their complexity. In the Republican period, the female literary archetypes of the "New Woman" and the "Modern Girl" developed as a response to the Confucian ideal of "good wives" and "wise mothers." Depictions of these new feminine archetypes often varied significantly between female and male writers. In literature written by women, the Modern Girl represented

16214-595: The time. In the first twenty years after the founding of the People's Republic of China, many literary works addressed the close relationship between rural Chinese and the Communist Party. At the same time, from the 1950s, in Taiwan has flourished modernist poetry , including avant-garde and surrealism , led by Qin Zihao (1902–1963) and Ji Xian (b. 1903). Classic of Poetry Early references refer to

16348-465: The translations of Yan Fu (嚴復) (1864–1921) and Lin Shu (林紓) (1852–1924). In this climate, a boom in the writing of fiction occurred, especially after the 1905 abolition of the civil service examination when literati struggled to fill new social and cultural roles for themselves. Stylistically, this fiction shows signs of both the Chinese novelistic tradition and Western narrative modes. In subject matter, it

16482-581: The verses of the "Airs of the States" to have been collected in the course of activities of officers dispatched by the Zhou dynasty court, whose duties included the field collection of the songs local to the territorial states of Zhou. This territory was roughly the Yellow River Plain , Shandong , southwestern Hebei , eastern Gansu , and the Han River region. Perhaps during the harvest . After

16616-526: The versions edited down by Liu Xiang and Liu Xin. Michael Nylan has characterised the scope of the Liu pair's editing as having been so vast that it affects our understanding of China's pre-imperial period to the same degree as the Qin unification does. The Four Books ( 四書 ; Sìshū ) are texts illustrating the core value and belief systems in Confucianism . They were selected by Zhu Xi (1130–1200) during

16750-406: The vibrant vernacular in its stead. Hu Shih once said, "A dead language can never produce a living literature." In terms of literary practice, Lu Xun (1881–1936) is usually said to be the first major stylist in the new vernacular prose that Hu Shih and Chen Duxiu were promoting. Another female writer who, in the words of scholar Nicole Huang, "persistently experimented with new literary language"

16884-475: The year 841 BC, at the beginning of the Gonghe Regency of the Western Zhou dynasty . The earliest known narrative history of China was the Zuo Zhuan , which was compiled no later than 389 BC, and attributed to the blind 5th-century BC historian Zuo Qiuming . The Book of Documents is thought to have been compiled as far back as the 6th century BC, and was certainly compiled by the 4th century BC,

17018-625: Was a frequent narrative structure and political mode of expression in literature of the late 1950s. These narratives depicted class struggle as a way to resolve social conflict, usually through the protagonists uncovering a conspiracy between new and old class enemies. Despite the literary control and strictures to limit subjects to contemporary China and the glories of the revolution, writers produced widely read novels of energy and commitment. Examples of this new socialist literature include The Builder (Chuangye Shi 創業史) by Liu Qing 柳青, The Song of Youth (Qing Chun Zhi Ge 青春之歌) by Yang Mo , Tracks in

17152-626: Was also the first in a tradition of Chinese military treatises, such as the Wujing Zongyao ( Collection of the Most Important Military Techniques , 1044 AD) and the Huolongjing ( Fire Dragon Manual , 14th century AD). The Chinese kept consistent and accurate court records, and although their calendars varied from court to court, these disparate records could be aligned without evident contradiction by

17286-535: Was born in obscurity by Tao Qian (365–427) also known as Tao Yuanming as he labored in his fields and then wrote extolling the influence of wine. Toward the close of this period in which many later-developed themes were first experimented with, the Xiao family of the Southern Liang dynasty (502–557) engaged in highly refined and often denigrated court-style poetry lushly describing sensual delights as well as

17420-557: Was completed by Ouyang Xun in 624 during the Tang dynasty , with aid from scholars Linghu Defen and Chen Shuda . During the Song dynasty , the compilation of the Four Great Books of Song (10th century – 11th century), begun by Li Fang and completed by Cefu Yuangui , represented a massive undertaking of written material covering a wide range of different subjects. This included the Taiping Guangji (978),

17554-484: Was more concerned with the unconscious and with aesthetics than with politics or social problems. Most important among these writers were Mu Shiying , Liu Na'ou (劉吶鷗), and Shi Zhecun . Other writers, including Shen Congwen and Fei Ming (廢名), balked at the utilitarian role for literature by writing lyrical, almost nostalgic, depictions of the countryside. Lin Yutang , who had studied at Harvard and Leipzig, introduced

17688-544: Was the Shiji , or Records of the Grand Historian written by Han dynasty court historian Sima Qian (145 BC – 90 BC). This groundbreaking text laid the foundation for Chinese historiography and the many official Chinese historical texts compiled for each dynasty thereafter. Sima Qian is often compared to the Greek Herodotus in scope and method, because he covered Chinese history from the mythical Xia dynasty until

17822-503: Was then considered to be southern China, the Chuci is ascribed to Qu Yuan (c. 340–278 BC) and his follower Song Yu (fl. 3rd century BC) and is distinguished by its more emotionally intense affect, often full of despair and descriptions of the fantastic. In some of its sections, the Chu Ci uses a six-character per line meter, dividing these lines into couplets separated in the middle by

17956-648: Was varied, self-conscious, and experimental. Scholars now tend to agree that modern Chinese literature did not erupt suddenly in the New Culture Movement (1910s–1920s). Instead, they trace its origins back at least to the late Qing period (1895–1911) and at most to the 17th century. The late Qing was a period of intellectual ferment sparked by a sense of national crisis. Intellectuals began to seek solutions to China's problems outside of its own tradition. They translated works of Western expository writing and literature, which enthralled readers with new ideas and opened up windows onto new exotic cultures. Most outstanding were

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