Misplaced Pages

#117882

69-510: Early references refer to 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

138-453: A conventional rule for line can occur in concrete poetry where the primacy of the visual component may over-ride or subsume poetic line in the generally regarded sense, or sound poems in which the aural component stretches the concept of line beyond any purely semantic coherence. At another extreme, the prose poem simply eschews poetic line altogether. scolds Forbid den Stop Must n't Don't The line break 'must/n't' allows

207-415: A double reading of the word as both 'must' and 'mustn't', whereby the reader is made aware that old age both enjoins and forbids the activities of youth. At the same time, the line break subverts 'mustn't': the forbidding of a certain activity—in the poem's context, the moral control the old try to enforce upon the young—only serves to make that activity more enticing. While Cummings's line breaks are used in

276-477: 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

345-485: A mind, am 'absolute,'" it 'really' means: "I am absolutely sure it was Cloten": I am absolute; ' Twas very Cloten. In every type of literature there is a metrical pattern that can be described as "basic" or even "national" . The most famous and widely used line of verse in English prosody is the iambic pentameter , while one of the most common of traditional lines in surviving classical Latin and Greek prosody

414-563: A poem but "chopped up prose". A dropped line is a line broken into two parts, with the second indented to remain visually sequential. In the standard conventions of Western literature , the line break is usually but not always at the left margin. Line breaks may occur mid-clause, creating enjambment , a term that literally means 'to straddle'. Enjambment "tend[s] to increase the pace of the poem", whereas end-stopped lines, which are lines that break on caesuras (thought-pauses often represented by ellipsis ), emphasize these silences and slow

483-545: 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

552-540: A poetic form that is intended to be appreciated through a visual, printed medium, line breaks are also present in poems predating the advent of printing. Examples are to be found, for instance, in Shakespeare's sonnets . Here are two examples of this technique operating in different ways in Shakespeare's Cymbeline : In the first example, the line break between the last two lines cuts them apart, emphasizing

621-604: 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

690-420: Is a unit of writing into which a poem or play is divided: literally, a single row of text. The use of a line operates on principles which are distinct from and not necessarily coincident with grammatical structures, such as the sentence or single clauses in sentences. Although the word for a single poetic line is verse , that term now tends to be used to signify poetic form more generally. A line break

759-551: Is characteristic of some complex and well composed poetry, such as in Milton 's Paradise Lost . A new line can begin with a lowercase or capital letter. New lines beginning with lowercase letters vaguely correspond with the shift from earlier to later poetry: for example, the poet John Ashbery usually begins his lines with capital letters prior to his 1991 book-length poem "Flow-Chart", whereas in and after "Flow-Chart" he almost invariably begins lines with lowercase letters unless

SECTION 10

#1732757664118

828-468: Is contrasted with other forms such as the Chu -derived " cí " and the Han -era " fu ". This use is not common within Chinese literature, however, which instead classifies these poems into other categories such as classical Chinese poetry , Fields and Gardens poetry , and "curtailed" poetry . Gushi , which means "Ancient Poetry", may be used in either of two senses. It may be used broadly to refer to

897-542: Is dark,/ Illumine, what is low raise and support,/ That to the height of this great argument/ I may assert eternal Providence,/ And justify the ways of God to men." ( Milton , Paradise Lost ). A stanza break can be indicated by the forward slash doubled (//). In more "free" forms, and in free verse in particular, conventions for the use of line become, arguably, more arbitrary and more visually determined such that they may only be properly apparent in typographical representation and/or page layout . One extreme deviation from

966-512: Is the termination of the line of a poem and the beginning of a new line. The process of arranging words using lines and line breaks is known as lineation , and is one of the defining features of poetry. A distinct numbered group of lines in verse is normally called a stanza . A title, in certain poems, is considered a line. Conventions that determine what might constitute line in poetry depend upon different constraints, aural characteristics or scripting conventions for any given language. On

1035-399: Is weakly observed or absent, the convention of line continues on the whole to be observed, at least in written representations, although there are exceptions (see Degrees of license ). In such writing, simple visual appearance on a page (or any other written layout) remains sufficient to determine poetic line, and this sometimes leads to the suggestion that the work in question is no longer

1104-587: 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

1173-450: The Classic , there are few formal constraints apart from line length (usually four characters and no more than seven) and rhyming every other line. Jintishi , which means "Modern Poetry", was actually composed from the 5th century onwards and is considered to have been fully developed by the early Tang dynasty. The works were principally written in five- and seven-character lines and involve constrained tone patterns , intended to balance

1242-638: 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

1311-466: 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

1380-536: 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

1449-445: 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

SECTION 20

#1732757664118

1518-572: 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

1587-476: 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

1656-642: The Ramayana and Mahabharata , was most famously composed using the 32-syllable verse, derived from the Vedic anuṣṭubh metre called shloka . Pioneers of the freer use of line in Western culture include Whitman and Apollinaire . Where the lines are broken in relation to the ideas in the poem it affects the feeling of reading the poetry. For example, the feeling may be jagged or startling versus soothing and natural, which can be used to reinforce or contrast

1725-504: 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

1794-620: 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

1863-719: The character 詩 / 诗 , the Chinese word for all poetry generally and across all languages. In Western analysis of the styles of Chinese poetry , shi is also used as a term of art for a specific poetic tradition, modeled after the Old Chinese works collected in the Confucian Classic of Poetry . This anthology included both aristocratic poems (the " Hymns " and " Eulogies ") and more rustic works believed to have derived from Huaxia folk songs (the " Odes "). They are composed in ancient Chinese , mostly in four- character lines. In such analysis, " shi " poetry

1932-464: The four tones of Middle Chinese within each couplet . The principal forms are the four-line jueju , the eight-line lüshi , and the unlimited pailü . In addition to the tonal patterns, lüshi and pailü were usually understood to further require parallelism in their interior couplets: a theme developed in one couplet would be contrasted in the following one, usually by means of the same parts of speech . Line (poetry) A line

2001-424: The language in question. (See Metre .) One visual convention that is optionally used to convey a traditional use of line in printed settings is capitalisation of the first letter of the first word of each line regardless of other punctuation in the sentence, but it is not necessary to adhere to this. Other formally patterning elements, such as end-rhyme , may also strongly indicate how lines occur in verse. In

2070-420: The speaking of verse , a line ending may be pronounced using a momentary pause , especially when its metrical composition is end-stopped , or it may be elided such that the utterance can flow seamlessly over the line break in what can be called run-on . When verse is quoted within sentences in prose articles or critical essays, line breaks can be indicated by the forward slash (/); for example: "What in me

2139-405: 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,

Classic of Poetry - Misplaced Pages Continue

2208-1022: 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

2277-482: 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

2346-566: 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

2415-548: 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

2484-753: 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

2553-550: 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

2622-465: The account of King Wu 's victory over the Shang dynasty in the "Major Court Hymns" as the "Weniad" (a name that parallels The Iliad ), seeing it as part of a greater narrative discourse in China that extols the virtues of wén ( 文 "literature, culture") over more military interests. Note: alternative divisions may be topical or chronological (Legge): Song, Daya, Xiaoya, Guofeng Shi (poetry) Shi and shih are romanizations of

2691-429: The ancient poetry of China, chiefly the mostly anonymous works collected in the Confucian Classic of Poetry , the separate tradition exemplified by Qu Yuan and Song Yu 's Songs of Chu , and the works collected by the Han " Music Bureau ". It may also be used strictly to refer to poems in the styles of the Confucian classic, regardless of their time of composition. Owing to the variety of pieces included in

2760-501: 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

2829-407: The beginning of the line is also the beginning of a new sentence . There is, however, some much earlier poetry where new lines begin with lowercase letters. Beginning a line with an uppercase letter when the beginning of the line does not coincide with the beginning of a new sentence is referred to by some as " majusculation ". (this is an invented term derived from majuscule ). The correct term

Classic of Poetry - Misplaced Pages Continue

2898-505: 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

2967-463: 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

3036-409: The cutting off of the head: With his own sword, Which he did wave against my throat, I have ta'en His head from him. In the second example, the text before the line break retains a meaning in isolation from the contents of the new line. This meaning is encountered by the reader before it being modified by the text after the line break, which clarifies that, instead of "I, as a person, as

3105-398: The decision to have the lines composed from specific numbers of syllables . Prose poetry is poetry without line breaks in accordance to paragraph structure as opposed to stanza . Enjambment is a line break in the middle of a sentence, phrase or clause, or one that offers internal (sub)text or rhythmically jars for added emphasis. Alternation between enjambment and end-stopped lines

3174-449: 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

3243-461: The ideas in the poem. Lines are often broken between words, but there is certainly a great deal of poetry where at least some of the lines are broken in the middles of words: this can be a device for achieving inventive rhyme schemes . In general, line breaks divide the poetry into smaller units called lines (this is a modernisation of the term verse ), which are often interpreted in terms of their self-contained meanings and aesthetic values: hence

3312-663: 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

3381-508: 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

3450-477: 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

3519-476: 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

SECTION 50

#1732757664118

3588-608: 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

3657-491: 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

3726-407: 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

3795-445: 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

3864-403: 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

3933-530: 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

4002-583: The poem down. Line breaks may also serve to signal a change of movement or to suppress or highlight certain internal features of the poem, such as a rhyme or slant rhyme . Line breaks can be a source of dynamism, providing a method by which poetic forms imbue their contents with intensities and corollary meanings that would not have been possible to the same degree in other forms of text. Distinct forms of line, as defined in various verse traditions, are usually categorised according to different rhythmical, aural or visual patterns and metrical length appropriate to

4071-452: 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

4140-487: 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

4209-496: 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

SECTION 60

#1732757664118

4278-447: 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

4347-486: 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

4416-435: 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 ),

4485-433: The term " good line ". Line breaks, indentations , and the lengths of individual words determine the visual shape of the poetry on the page, which is a common aspect of poetry but never the sole purpose of a line break. A dropped line is a line broken into two parts, in which the second part is indented to remain visually sequential through spacing. In metric poetry, the places where the lines are broken are determined by

4554-580: 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

4623-408: The whole, where relevant, a line is generally determined either by units of rhythm or repeating aural patterns in recitation that can also be marked by other features such as rhyme or alliteration , or by patterns of syllable -count. In Western literary traditions, use of line is arguably the principal feature which distinguishes poetry from prose . Even in poems where formal metre or rhyme

4692-557: The word shi in this regard 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

4761-534: Was the hexameter . In modern Greek poetry hexameter was replaced by line of fifteen syllables. In French poetry alexandrine is the most typical pattern. In Italian literature the hendecasyllable , which is a metre of eleven syllables, is the most common line. In Serbian ten syllable lines were used in long epic poems. In Polish poetry two types of line were very popular, an 11-syllable one, based on Italian verse and 13-syllable one, based both on Latin verse and French alexandrine. Classical Sanskrit poetry, such as

#117882