Representative literary forms in pre-Qin period

1, Ballad Myth: Ancient folk songs and myths and legends are recorded from time to time in ancient books. Myth is the collective oral creation of ancestors in ancient times, which is used to explain and describe the natural and social phenomena they contacted artistically.

2. Historical prose: It is gradually produced and matured on the basis of the cultural tradition of historians. Shangshu is the earliest compilation of historical documents in China, which is of fundamental significance in the history of ancient Chinese prose. The Spring and Autumn Annals compiled by Confucius is the first chronological history book in China, and it is the originator of chronological history books.

3. The Book of Songs: There are 305 existing kinds of The Book of Songs, which are divided into three parts: Feng, Ya and Ode. "Wind" comes from folk songs all over the country and is the essence of The Book of Songs. Ya is divided into Ya and Xiaoya, and most of them are poems that offer sacrifices to nobles, pray for a bumper harvest and praise their ancestors. Ode is a poem dedicated to the ancestral temple.

4. Prose of various schools of thought: It was formed and prospered under the background of the awakening of rational spirit and the academic atmosphere of a hundred schools of thought contending in the pre-Qin period.

5. Songs of Chu: Poems and Fu which appeared in the Warring States period and have special significance in the history of China literature and have local characteristics of Chu State.