The Cultural Significance of The Book of Songs

The cultural significance of The Book of Songs;

The Book of Songs is rich in content, reflecting labor and love, war and corvee, oppression and resistance, customs and marriage, ancestor worship and feasting, and even astronomical phenomena, landforms, animals and plants. It is a mirror of the social life of the Zhou Dynasty.

The Book of Songs has a lofty position and far-reaching influence in the history of China literature, which has laid a fine tradition of China's poetry and thus formed the national characteristics of China's poetry art.

First, realism and traditional spirit.

The Book of Songs is based on real social life, without fantasy and grotesque, and there are few supernatural myths. Sacrifice, feasting and farming described are the products of social economy, etiquette and music culture in Zhou Dynasty. The description of the current situation, war corvee, marriage and love shows the political situation, social life, customs and people's feelings of the Zhou Dynasty. This "hungry people sing about their food, and laborers sing about their affairs."

Second, the tradition of lyric poetry

Since the Book of Songs, lyric poetry has become one of the main forms of poetry.

Thirdly, elegance and literary innovation.

The enthusiasm for reality, strong political and moral consciousness and sincere and positive attitude towards life in The Book of Songs were inherited and carried forward by Qu Yuan, and were summarized as the spirit of elegance by later generations.

Later poets often advocate the spirit of elegance to carry out literary innovation. Chen Ziang lamented Qi Liang's "elegance", while Li Bai lamented that "elegance is not long enough, who can fail me?" Du Fu is "unconventional and elegant", Bai Juyi called Zhang Ji "elegance is better than fashion and never tasted empty talk", and many outstanding poets in the Tang Dynasty inherited the spirit of elegance. Moreover, this spirit extended from Lu You in the Song Dynasty to Huang Zunxian in the late Qing Dynasty.

Fourth, Fu Bixing's example.

The expression of "Fu, Bi and Xing" in The Book of Songs has been inherited and developed in the creation of ancient poetry, which has become an important feature of China's ancient poetry. The Book of Songs also proves the artistic creativity of working people with vivid facts. The overlapping forms and accurate, vivid and beautiful language of folk songs in The Book of Songs have been widely absorbed and used by later poets and writers. The Book of Songs, with its profound social content and beautiful artistic form, attracts the attention and reference of later scholars to folk songs. The flexible and diverse poetic forms and vivid and rich language of The Book of Songs have also had an important influence on various genres of literature in later generations. During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, Cao Cao, Ji Kang and others all studied the Book of Songs and wrote four-character poems. The rhymes of Fu, Fu, Prose and Ming in the history of literature are also related to The Book of Songs.

The birth of The Book of Songs (including its generation, collection and compilation) first created a new style in the history of China's poetry-four-character style. Before the Book of Songs, although poetry was born, it did not have its own fixed style, and it was still in oral form, generally dominated by two words; It was in The Book of Songs era that China's poetry really laid its own creative pattern and formed a relatively stable style. That is to say, the real start of China's poetry began in The Book of Songs era.

The Book of Songs not only created the first tangible historical stage in the history of China's poetry-four-character poems, but also influenced the poetry creation of later generations: First, the five-character poems, seven-character poems, especially five-character poems, were breakthroughs and expansions based on them; Second, even in the era of May 7th, there are still many four-character poems written by authors, which follow the form of The Book of Songs.

In terms of the rhythm of poetry, The Book of Songs has also set a precedent for later poetry, especially in the rhyming form and voice of poetry, which provides a paradigm and model for later poetry and has important value and significance in the history of poetry creation.

More importantly, The Book of Songs created the artistic style of portrait in its creation-it vividly portrayed and expressed the characteristics of things, people and society with its simple, true and vivid language, artistically reproduced the essence of society, and provided a model and reference paradigm for later literary creation (especially poetry creation). Specifically, The Book of Songs painted a vivid picture of social history for that time and later generations, truly reflected the face of ancient society, eulogized the industriousness and courage of ancient people, lashed the meanness of the ruling class, and left a three-dimensional and figurative picture of history for later generations. It is a rich and vivid ancient encyclopedia.