The Generation of Poetry (Pre-Qin)
The Book of Songs is generally regarded as the source of China's ancient poetry. In fact, the poetry in The Book of Songs is a relatively mature form, and its origin is much earlier than that in The Book of Songs.
Poetry is produced by humming after work. There is a saying that the labor chant may also be the origin of poetry.
The earliest thing that can be defined as poetry is "playing songs" in Wu Yue Chun Qiu. This two-character poem is the smallest structure that the rhythm and rhyme of classical Chinese can achieve, and it has the nature of poetry:
To cut wild bamboo, to make a bow; To play with mud, to chase prey.
The Book of Songs is mainly composed of four words, which are orderly arranged, rhyming, repeated and all-encompassing, and basically include the predecessors of various schools of poetry in later generations, so we can call it the achievement of Spring and Autumn Poetry, not just the origin.
The Development of Poetry (Han Dynasty)
There are books of songs in the Central Plains and long and short sentences in the South.
Miscellaneous words appeared in Songs of the South, which is obviously different from the style of The Book of Songs. Xiang Yu and Liu Bang were both Chu people, and this poetic style became popular.
The Han dynasty ushered in the great national integration, and the Hu people changed the dignified and steady rhythm of Central Plains music. With the faster rhythm and longer chapters, four-character poems can no longer satisfy the singing, so there are five-character poems, seven-character poems and even six-character, eight-character and nine-character poems.
Leap of Poetry (Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties)
Poetry has made a qualitative leap in the Cao Wei period.
The two greatest contributions to poetry in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties-literary talent and temperament-originated from Cao Zhi.
The literary talent of poetry has developed to the extreme, and it has become a formalism-oriented "Qi Liang Style", that is, "Palace Style Poetry". As long as you are nice and beautiful, you have no ambition and are addicted to affairs and boudoir feelings.
Cao Zhi invented the "Bai Fan" and began to seek the original pronunciation rules of words other than independent music. The phonology of the Southern and Northern Dynasties developed by leaps and bounds. Shen Yue, Zhou Qing and others put forward "four tones and eight diseases" and successfully applied them to poetry creation.
The development of temperament is the basis of the level-tone meter in the Tang Dynasty, and it is also the key to the existence of poetry independent of music.
After 500 years of rapid development, poetry has begun to take shape in form, and a hundred flowers are blooming in genre. In the prosperous Tang Dynasty, all preparations were made for flying songs.
The pinnacle of poetry (Tang)
In view of the "Qi Liang Feng" in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the literati in Sui and Tang Dynasties began to rectify their writing style. Chen Ziang put forward the concept of "Han-Wei style". Numerous poets in the early Tang Dynasty and the prosperous Tang Dynasty followed the palace-style poems in format, kept forging ahead in content, and were full of vitality in images, which finally made the Tang poems beautiful and touching.
Shangguan Yi, Shen Quanqi, Du Fu, Song and others contributed to the standardization of poetic style.
These court poets studied the format carefully, but they met the ups and downs of Wu Zhou and Tang Xuanzong. When the court poets were exiled and roamed the rivers and lakes, the ideological content of their works rose. A large number of poetic works with both situations came out, which led the poetic style of the whole dynasty.
Li Bai's contribution in the history of poetry is mainly to improve and standardize the Seven Wonders with Wang Changling. On the theory of poetry, Du Fu decided that the future trend of Tang poetry should focus on content, emotion and Han Wei.
Under the pressure of Du Li, poets in the middle Tang Dynasty began to dig deep into Tang poetry. For example, Han Yu's "prose enters poetry", Li Yi specializes in "frontier poems", Liu Yuxi takes the nostalgic route to develop "Zhi Zhu Ci", Bai Juyi takes the civilian route, and Li He simply writes poems about ghosts and gods.
The prosperous Tang Dynasty is the peak, and the middle Tang Dynasty is the plain on the peak, which blooms everywhere. Great poets, like meteors chasing the moon, emerge in endlessly.
This is the best time in the history of China's poetry.
Aftertaste of Poetry (Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties)
After the Anshi Rebellion, the whole dynasty began to collapse, and the cultural image began to take the old road at the end of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and the poetic style was diverted to hermits and musicians.
The highest artistic achievement in the late Tang Dynasty was Li Shangyin, who combined the characteristics of all the great poets of the previous generation. Although sometimes the allusions are abstruse and obscure, his poetic achievements are not inferior to those of the whole Tang Dynasty.
The only thing Du Li can't compare with is the lack of weather, but this is not his reason, but the reason of the times.
However, all this is a change in the style of poetry. For poetry itself, by the late Tang Dynasty, the rules of metrical poetry had developed.
Qu Zi's Ci began to enter the room in the hands of Du Mu, Bai Juyi and Liu Yuxi, and became a more agile thinking direction of literati outside the poetic norms.
With the rise of epigrams, the history of poetry did not end here. In addition to the peak of poetry in the middle Tang Dynasty, there was the second peak of Neo-Confucianism poetry in the Song Dynasty and the third peak of poetry revival in the Qing Dynasty.
For example, Kunxi Style, imperial academy Style, Elephant Mountain Style, Jianghu Style, Four-Spirit Poetry School and Jiangxi Poetry School, including the Police School and Spirit School in Qing Dynasty, are only different levels of the progress of the times and the awakening of literati's thoughts, and the form of poetry itself has not changed.
A brief history of poetry, roughly.