The Source of China's Romantic Literature

The source of China's romantic literature is Qu Yuan and Chu Ci.

Qu Yuan and Chu Ci are regarded as the source of China's romantic literature. Realism and romanticism are both important ideological movements in Europe since modern times, and they undoubtedly share many characteristics with China's ancient literary creation practice. However, from China's cultural standpoint, it is inappropriate to generalize the creative tradition of China ancient literature with realism or romanticism, including the characteristics of Qu Yuan and Chu Ci with romanticism. Romantic literature in Europe is characterized by paying attention to expressing subjective ideals, expressing strong personal feelings, and pursuing strong contrast between beauty and ugliness and artistic effects of surprise. Contrary to the classical aesthetic ideal of silence, simplicity, harmony and integrity, romantic literature emphasizes revealing beauty from the rapid changes in life, spiritual turmoil and various strange phenomena full of characteristics and mysterious significance. It was Lu Xun who first introduced romanticism to China, translated it into "Moro" and wrote "On Moro Poetry" at 1907. "Moro Poetry School" refers to 18 and 19 century European romantics.

Chu Ci is a new poetic style created by Qu Yuan and the first collection of romantic poems in the history of China literature. The name of "Songs of the South" existed in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty and was compiled by Liu Xiangnai. Wang Yi wrote chapters and sentences in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Qu Yuan and Song Yu, Chu people in the Warring States Period, and sixteen poems written by Xiaoshan, Dong Fangshuo, Wang Bao and Liu Xiang in Huainan in the Han Dynasty. Later, Wang Yi added his Jiu Si to Article 17. The book is mainly based on Qu Yuan's works, and the rest are also in the form of Qu Fu. Because of its use of Chu's style, dialect phonology and local products, it has a strong local color, so it is named "Chu Ci", which has a far-reaching influence on later poems.