The Book of Poetry and Pre-Qin Prose

The Book of Poetry is the first collection of poetry in China. Compiled during the Spring and Autumn Period, it is roughly the work of the 500 years from the beginning of the Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, and contains 305 poems, which represents the highest achievement of poetic creation more than 2,500 years ago. The works in the Book of Songs are all sung in a musical ensemble, and are divided into three main sections, namely, "Wind", "Elegance", and "Ode". Winds are musical tunes, and State Winds means the music of each country, ****160 pieces. Wind", "elegant" is a reflection of the Zhou Dynasty political decline in the period of social life works, also known as "change wind", "change elegant". Ya is the name of the music, divided into "Daya" and "Xiao Ya", is the music of the Zhou dynasty directly ruled the region, ****105. Ode is a hymn, is the music of sacrifice, there are "Zhou Ode", "Lu Ode", "Shang Ode" three parts, ****40 pieces.

The Book of Songs is very rich in content, reflecting the social life during more than 500 years from different angles respectively. Its contents mainly include the following aspects: ① It recounts many legends and histories from the birth of Houji, the founder of Zhou, to the destruction of Shang by King Wu. Such as Daya in the "Shengmin", "Gong Liu", "Mian", "HuangYi", "Daming" and so on is written in rhyme history. ② Reflecting social mourning, depicting the suffering of war, and blaming reality. The two generations of King Li of Zhou and King Yu of Zhou were politically corrupt and suffered from serious foreign disasters, so they produced a lot of poems reflecting the decadence of the ruling class and the conflicts between the rulers and the people. For example, "Sang Zuo" in Daya reveals the tragic scene of people being displaced, killed, injured and dispersed in the midst of turmoil. The "Suppression" in Daya. In the Daya, the poem "Suppression" accuses the ruler of his perverse behavior and his corrupt life, in which he only knows how to drink and make merry. The Xiao Ya - The Crossing of the 10th Month lists the names of King Yu of Zhou's squeezing servants, including Huang Fu, and exposes the internal and external collusion between them and the king's "beautiful wife", Baosi, who was a hotshot of corruption. Xiaoya - The First Moon" depicts social inequality, pointing out that while the ruling class owns property and lives comfortably, the general public is reduced to misery in the midst of social turmoil. Xiao Ya - Cai Wei" describes the sadness of the soldiers who left their hometowns and went into exile during the reign of King Xuan of Zhou, and who suffered from hunger and cold on the way back to their hometowns: "In the past, I went back, and the willows are still clinging to each other. Now I am coming to think of it, the rain and snow are falling. The road is late, and I am thirsty and hungry. My heart is sad, and no one knows my sorrow!" ③ Anti-exploitation and anti-oppression. Representative works include "Felling Sandalwood" and "Rats" in Wei Style, "Bustard Feather" in Tang Style, and "North Wind" in Name Style. For example, "Cutting Down Sandalwood" reads: "I cut down sandalwood in Kankan, and put it in the dryness of the river. The river is clear and rippling. If you don't gather crops, why don't you harvest 300 marketplaces? If you don't hunt, you don't hunt, but if you don't have a county in your court, you'll have a badger. He is a gentleman, not a vegetarian." The lumberjacks labor all day long by the river, but have nothing, while those "gentlemen" do not cultivate and do not hunt, but is full of rice, prey full of court. They questioned about this, and the questioning contained anger, which was expressed more strongly in "The Mouse". ④ Describe love and marriage. This is a large part of the wind poems, most of which are ballads. Most of these poems are frank and bold confessions with sincere, passionate, pure and healthy feelings, reflecting all the sorrows, joys, gains and losses, and changes in love life, and the contents are seldom repeated. Representative works include "Zheng Feng - ? Ruoxi", "Zheng Feng - will be Zhongzi", "name of the wind - Jing female", "Zao Nan - wild have died", "Zheng Feng - River River", "Chen Feng - Zepei", "Tang Feng - Ge Sheng", "Zhounan - roll ear", "Wei Feng - Bo Ruoxi", "Qin Feng - morning wind", "Wang Feng - the gentleman in the service," and so on, some of them express the free and innocent of the men and women will meet, and some of them depicted the loss of love, unrequited love, the pain of lovesickness, and some of them show the resistance to the parental constraints. For example, "The Still Woman" reads: "The Still Woman is a pretty girl, and she is waiting for me at the corner of the city. I love her, but I don't see her, so I scratch my head. The girl was so beautiful that she gave me a pipe to play with. The pipes are full of wires, and they say that Bonnie is a beautiful woman. Since the pastoral return catkin, the beauty and difference. The beauty of a woman is the beauty of a beauty." This poem describes a pair of lovers to meet in the corner of the city, when the man came, his lover deliberately hid. When the man arrives, his lover deliberately hides. He waits for a long time but does not see her, so he "scratches his head and stumbles". When he realized that his lover had come as promised, and gave him a handful of red grass with deep affection, he was overjoyed. He felt that the grass was "beautiful and different" because it was given by his beloved. The person in the poem is lively and naive, and the love in the poem is lingering and deep, expressing the love interest of men and women in natural and simple language. ⑤ Describes labor scenes. Many of the poems in the Book of Songs are about the labor of the working people. For example, "Semi-finish Wind - Sangzhong", "Tang Feng - Caiqin", "Sequoia Wind - Gufeng", "Bin Feng - Felling Ke", "Zhounan - Pseudo-Peanut", etc. Some of the poems are sung during labor. Some of the poems are songs sung during labor, which can make the readers feel the joy of labor and arouse rich imagination; some of them also write about the hardship and busyness of labor; and some of them recount the situation in which the nobles forced the slaves to do heavy labor. There are also many works of the aristocracy in the Book of Songs.

The Book of Songs is very distinctive in its artistic creation. First of all, the works in the Book of Songs depicted real life in many ways, expressed the various feelings of people of different classes in real life, and truly reflected real life, which was one of its major features. Whenever later writers objected to the tendency of poetry to be detached from social life, they would take the Book of Songs as an example. Secondly, The Book of Songs utilizes a lot of comparing and rising techniques, which has achieved remarkable artistic effects. "Than" is a metaphor and simile, the poem with "catkin" than the hand, with "jade" than the beautiful people, are clear metaphor, "Wei Feng - Shuo rat" than the exploiter of rats, is a person anthropomorphism. "Xing" is "the first other things, to cause the" Wing of the words ", it is a poem or a chapter of the beginning of the poem. Such as "Qin Feng - reed" to "reed reed pale, white dew for frost" of the autumn depression scene for the rise, caused by the following, so that the poem is more twisted and euphemistic. The use of the technique of comparison greatly enhances the artistic infectious force of poetry and enriches the artistic realm of poetry, this expression has been inherited and developed by the ancient poetry of our country. Thirdly, The Book of Songs is also very distinctive in its structure, the most prominent one being the repeated chapters and sentences. The most prominent one is the overlapping chapters. Sometimes the overlapping chapters indicate the degree and order of the progress of things. For example, the first chapter of "Wang Feng - Cai Ge" reads, "He cai ge, a day is not seen, such as March. In the second and third chapters, "采葛" is changed to "采萧" and "采艾", and "三月" is changed to "三秋" and "三秋" and "三秋" and "三秋" and "三秋". The second and third chapters changed the words "Cai Ge" to "Cai Xiao" and "Cai Ai", and the words "March" to "Three Autumns" and "Three Years". The overlapping sentences enhance the musicality and rhythm of the poem, and better express the poet's feelings, making people read the poem with an endless flavor. Fourthly, "The Book of Songs" is also quite unique in its genre. The Book of Songs is mostly a four-line stanza with rhymes in every other stanza, but it is not rigid and full of variations. The fugue of the later generations was mostly influenced by the Book of Songs. In addition to the fugue, ode, praise, monument, admonition, aphorism, inscription and other rhymes, generally in four lines, but also by the influence of the Book of Poetry.

The Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods was an era of rapid social change, and during this period, the pre-Qin prose took an important place in the history of Chinese literature. The cultural atmosphere of a hundred flowers blossoming and a hundred schools of thought contending for supremacy contributed to the prosperity of literature and ushered in a glorious era of culture, especially the doctrines of Confucianism, Mohism, Taoism, and the Law, which laid the foundation of traditional Chinese culture.

Pre-Qin prose can be mainly divided into historical prose and the prose of the sons. As far as the general situation is concerned, historical prose is mainly narrative, and the prose of the sons is mainly reasoning. Historical prose includes the Spring and Autumn Annals, the Zuo Zhuan, the Strategies of the Warring States, and the State Language. The Spring and Autumn Annals is the earliest chronicle of the Warring States period compiled by Confucius. It recounts the major events of various countries during the 242 years from the year of the Duke Yin of Lu (722) to the fourteenth year of the Duke of Lamentations (480), and Confucius also made some comments on those events in accordance with his own point of view, and chose the words that he thought were appropriate to imply the meanings of praise and blame, which is what is often referred to as the "micro-aggressions". The Zuo Zhuan, following its example, follows the order of the 12 Lu monarchs, namely, Yin, Huan, Zhuang, Min, Xi, Wen, Xuan, Cheng, Xiang, Zhao, Ding and Lamentation, and the whole book is in 30 volumes, detailing the political, diplomatic and social events of each country in the Spring and Autumn Period, as well as the activities of some representative figures. From a literary point of view, it has high artistic achievements. It created a variety of sophisticated chapter structure and charming literary language, vividly depicted a series of characters, and was especially good at writing complex war events in a euphemistic tone. For example, the Battle of Chang Spoon between Qi and Lu, the Battle of Cheng Pu between Jin and Chu, the Battle of Semi-finish between Qin and Jin, and the Battle of Semi-finish between Jin and Chu, all of them are tense and dramatic, and have become models of narrative prose for later generations. The "Strategies of the Warring States", also known as the "Strategies of the State", is said to have been compiled by the historians or strategists of the Warring States period. During the Western Han Dynasty, it was organized by Liu Xiang into 33 articles. It mainly describes the political ideas and struggle strategies put forward by strategists and strategists when they lobbied or debated with each other. In between, there are biographies, stories, arguments, and letters, reflecting the sharp and complex political struggles among countries at that time, and it is another famous historical prose of the pre-Qin period following the Spring and Autumn Period and the Zuo Zhuan. In terms of artistic creation, compared with Zuo Zhuan, it has been developed again, often vividly depicting characters' words and deeds in complex political events, portraying many vivid characters and writing many stories with twists and turns in the plot. For example, "Feng Deceived Meng Chang Jun", "Jing Ke Entered Qin", "Touching the Empress Dowager Zhao", "Su Qin Will Begin to Lian Heng" and so on are all famous and popular articles. This book is especially important to the language art, a lot of use of hyperbole, metaphor. The book emphasizes the art of language, making extensive use of hyperbole, simile, analogy, and other artistic techniques, and mixing them with fables, presenting a distinctive feature of "Shizang Yangli" and "Dialectical and Unbridled". The 21-volume Guoyu*** is said to have been written by Zuo Qiu Ming. The book recounts a number of events in the history of various countries in a focused manner. The text is simple and easy to read, characterized by a long record of words, but also good at describing the demeanor of the characters.

Zhuzi prose can be divided into three periods: a period is the end of the Spring and Autumn Period and the early Warring States period, the main works, the Analects of Confucius is a discourse, the Laozi more rhyme, they are words about the meaning of abundance, the Mozi began to the organization of the tightly structured form of the discourse development. The second period is the middle of the Warring States period, the main works are "Mengzi", "Zhuangzi", their rhetoric than the previous period of rich, reasoning also smooth. The third period is the end of the Warring States period, the main works are Xunzi, Hanfeizi and so on. The representative essays of Zhu Zi's prose are strict in logic, in-depth analysis, and brilliant in rhetoric, and have reached a high level of achievement. Some of the texts in the prose of Zhu Zi are characterized by the expression of characters and the description of their behavior, which makes people read them as if they were seeing their faces and smiles. The Analects of Confucius and Mencius have more of these texts, and Mozi's Gongshu also belongs to this category. For example, the Analects of Confucius wrote about Confucius' disciple, Zilu, his blunt, reckless and fierce character; Yan Yuan wrote about his silence, good learning and poverty. There are also a lot of figurative sentences in the Analects, such as "The year is cold and then we know that pines and cypresses are sculpted afterward", "The three armies can take away the commander-in-chief, but the horsemen can't take away the will", etc. The second is the use of profound meaning. Secondly, the theory is clarified in the form of fables with profound meanings. Zhuangzi" is the most outstanding achievement in this regard. In Zhuangzi, there are the so-called "fables", "heavy words" and "goblet words". Zhuang Zhou thought that the world was "muddy" and could not speak "Zhuang language", so he used the "fables" and "re-tellings" which were "fallacious words, absurd words, and unprovoked cliff words". Therefore, he used "fables", "absurd words, unprovoked words" to express his thoughts. Fables include some mythological fantasies and fables; rewords are quotes from some historical stories and words of the ancients; goblet words are abstract theories. The artistic achievement of Zhuangzi lies first of all in the fact that it is rich in romanticism and strong poetry. For example, "The Journey to the Promenade" begins with "There is a fish in the northern underworld, and its name is Kun, and it is not known how many thousands of kilometers big it is. The roc's back is so big that I don't know how many thousands of miles it is." At the very beginning, it talks about the vastness of heaven and earth, and writes about the arbitrary change of the roc's traveling. It creates a very open mood. Artistically, many poets and prose writers of later times loved to learn the style and technique of Zhuangzi. Its richly imaginative fables and retellings have given later generations of literary scholars endless inspiration. Thirdly, it emphasizes on abstract analysis. At the same time, it is also rich in literary flavor, such as "Xunzi" and "Hanfeizi". Xunzi" in the "persuasion", "the theory of heaven", "sex and evil" good to reasoning, argumentative style, calm and thick; "Han Fei Zi" in the "five moths", "lonely indignation", "said difficult" are harsh and sharp style, reasoning fine and thorough. They all gave the later generations of prose with an important impact.