The Formation and Development of Three Literary Types of Ancient Chinese Literature

Ancient Chinese literature can be divided into pre-Qin literature, Qin and Han literature, Wei, Jin, North and South Dynasties literature, Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties literature, Song, Jin and Yuan literature, Ming Dynasty literature and Qing Dynasty literature. The representative forms of literature are poems, lyrics, songs, fugues, essays, novels, etc., and a large number of chapters are popular.

Specific Baidu Encyclopedia: Classical Chinese Literature/view/1637121.htm?fr=aladdin

Pre-Qin prose can be divided into historical prose and the prose of the sons. As far as the general situation is concerned, the 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, modeled after it, 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, there is another development, often in the complex political events, vividly depicting the words and deeds of the characters, portraying many lifelike characters and writing a lot of plot twists and turns in the story. 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 popular and famous 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 years of the 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 important influence on the prose of later generations.

Chu Rhetoric and Han Fu

Rhetoric is one of the ancient Chinese literary styles. Rhetoric is known as Chu Rhetoric because it was produced in Chu during the Warring States period; Fugu is the meaning of spreading, characterized by "spreading and spreading words" and "writing directly". Both have the nature of rhyme and prose, is a half-poetry, half-writing unique style. The structure is magnificent, the rhetoric is gorgeous, pay attention to the literary style, rhyme, commonly used exaggerations, spread out the techniques.

Chu Shi (楚辞) is a literary work created by the people of Chu during the Warring States period, represented by Qu Yuan (屈原). At the time of Emperor Cheng of Han Dynasty, Liu Xiang brought together Qu Yuan, Song Yu, Tang Le, Jing Dai, as well as the Western Han Dynasty's Jia Yi, Huainan Xiaoshan, Dongfang Shuo, Zhuang Ji, Wang Bao, etc. and his own rhetoric into a collection of ****16 pieces, which was named "Chu Rhetoric". Chu Rhetoric" in the most works of Qu Yuan, the highest quality, his "Li Sao" is the masterpiece of the Chu Rhetoric, the later is also known as the Chu Rhetoric this style of writing for the "Sao style".

"Li Sao" is the masterpiece of Qu Yuan (about 340~277 years ago), which is the longest lyric poem in ancient China, with 373 lines and 2490 words. It is a masterpiece of Romanticism, in which the poet bursts forth with an exceptionally brilliant luster of lofty ideals and ardent feelings.

The main characteristic of Han Fu is that it is a unique literary genre in ancient China, which is characterized by writing and reciting without singing. The representative writers of Han Fu in the early Han Dynasty were mainly Jia Yi and Meixian. Jia Yi (201～169) was a native of Luoyang. His representative works include "鵩鸟赋" and "吊屈原赋". Jia Yi inherited the style of Qu Yuan's Sao Yuan (骚体赋). His "Hanging Qu Yuan Fugu" compares himself with what happened to Qu Yuan. The "Foo Bird" expresses his feelings of injustice and uncompromising spirit of unrecognized talent. His fugu tended to be prose, using a lot of four-character sentences, reflecting the traces of the transition from Chu rhetoric to the new style of fugu. In addition to Jia Yi, Mei Yu was the most important fugu writer in the early Han Dynasty. The main activity period of Meixian was during the reigns of Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing of the Han Dynasty. There are nine fugues of Mei multiplied in the Book of Han - Art and Literature, and three fugues in the present biography, and "Seven Hair" is his representative work. Seven Hair" consists of eight passages based on the questions and answers between the prince of Chu and a guest of Wu. The work assumes that the prince of Chu is sick, and Wu Ke goes to ask him about his illness, pointing out that the root cause of the prince's illness lies in the corruption of his life and his greed for comfort, and that this illness cannot be cured by medicine. Wu Ke skillfully describes music, food, carriage, palace, hunting, and watching the waves, etc., with the aim of diverting the Prince's interest with "the most important words and the most wonderful way. Mei Xie was a court literati who was familiar with court life, so he was able to make the facts and reasoning very clear and pertinent. In the art of "Seven Hair", he makes good use of image and comparison, and the spreading of features is distinctive. Such as writing the shape of the wave section: "its beginning to rise also, the flood drenching Yan, if the egret under the flight; its less into also, Hao Hao , such as the white horse curtains of the sheet of the veiled car; its wave and cloud chaos, disturbing Yan such as the three armies of the Tengzhi; its side and run up also, floating Yan such as the light car of the Le army." This paragraph repeatedly used the marching and fighting to compare the situation, and wrote the sound of the waves to the fullest extent. The "Seven Hair" marked the official formation of the Han Fu. Many authors imitated the form of Qifa in later times, and formed a kind of subject-object question-and-answer style in the fu, which was called "seven styles", but there was no one who surpassed Qifa. In the era of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty and Emperor Cheng of Han Dynasty, it was the heyday of Han Fu, and the representative writers were Sima Xiangru, Yang Xiong and so on. Sima Xiangru (179~118 BC) was a native of Chengdu. His representative works include "Zi Xu Fu", "Shang Lin Fu", "Chang Men Fu", "Beauty Fugue", "Adults Fugue" and so on. Zi Xu Fu" and "Shang Lin Fu" piled up a lot of nouns and adjectives, with little variation. However, some sentences focus on depiction and read in a simple and natural way. Li Bai read the Zi Xu Fu, envied the scenery of Yunmeng depicted in it, and lived in An Lu (north of present-day An Lu County, Hubei Province), apparently attracted by some of Sima Xiangru's depictions. Yang Xiong (53 B.C.-18 A.D.) was a native of Chengdu. He lived in the era of Emperor Cheng of the Han Dynasty, and some commented that his fugue resembled Sima Xiangru. His representative works include Ganquan Fugue, Feather Hunting Fugue, Chang Yang Fugue and Poverty Expulsion Fugue. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the fugue gradually declined, and the representative works are Zhang Heng's Erjing Fugue and Returning to the Field Fugue. Returning to the field is a small lyrical fugue, sweeping the Han fugue to carry the road, imitation, praise and flatter the old habits, to create a kind of light, romantic, fresh style, showing the author in the dynasty under the situation of the day to go back to the pleasure of the pastoral, the generation of lyrical fugue of the period of the Wei and Jin dynasties have an important impact.