classic of poetry summary

Confucius High opinion of the Classic of Poetry led to it inclusion in the canon of the “Confucian Classics.” Confucius strongly believed that the political order depended on the ability of individuals in society to cultivate their moral virtue and thus contribute to social order. [9] Lines tend to occur in syntactically related couplets, with occasional parallelism, and longer poems are generally divided into similarly structured stanzas.[14]. It is also a rich source of chengyu (four-character classical idioms) that are still a part of learned discourse and even everyday language in modern Chinese. Poems written in verse outpour strong sensibility through imagination and lyrics. It is one of the "Five Classics" traditionally said to have been compiled by Confucius, and has been studied and memorized by scholars in China and neighboring countries over two millennia. 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Classic of Poetry is the oldest poetry collection of East Asia. [30], The Book of Odes has been a revered Confucian classic since the Han Dynasty, and has been studied and memorized by centuries of scholars in China. 1045-256 B.C.C. Facebook. [30] Xu Shen's influential dictionary Shuowen Jiezi, written in the 2nd century AD, quotes almost exclusively from the Mao Poetry. Wang refers to the account of King Wu's victory over the Shang dynasty in the "Major Court Hymns" as the "Weniad" (a name that parallels The Iliad), seeing it as part of a greater narrative discourse in China that extols the virtues of wén (文 "literature, culture") over more military interests. [1] The majority of the Odes date to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BC), and were drawn from around 15 kingdoms, those which were mainly provinces and cities in the Zhongyuan area. Since Chen, scholars have analyzed the rhyming patterns of the Poetry as crucial evidence for the reconstruction of Old Chinese phonology.[20]. Granet, in his list of rules for properly reading the Odes, wrote that readers should "take no account of the standard interpretation", "reject in no uncertain terms the distinction drawn between songs evicting a good state of morals and songs attesting to perverted morality", and "[discard] all symbolic interpretations, and likewise any interpretation that supposes a refined technique on the part of the poets". Poet: Robert Frost. Traits of Classical Chinese poetry: (1) Usually, the Chinese poem is fairly simple on the surface. [31] March 21, 2016 Uncategorized jl131076. According to the Chronicles of the Grand Historian 史記: Confucius sang the 305 poems in the Shijing to the accompaniment of stringed instruments. Responding in praise to the one in Heaven,             對越在天 With your bitter, twisted … By the 5th century, the Lu, Qi and Han traditions had died out, leaving only the Mao Poetry, which has become the received text in use today. [25] Some pre-Qin dynasty texts, such as the Analects and a recently excavated manuscript from 300 BC entitled "Confucius' Discussion of the Odes", mention Confucius' involvement with the Classic of Poetry but Han dynasty historian Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian was the first work to directly attribute the work to Confucius. Huge Rat- Page 1328. In addition to conveying the history and values of the earlier part of the Zhou Dynasty (ca. Poem number 42, “Gentle Girl”, in the “Classic of Poetry” teaches all three topics: morals, virtue and rhetoric. “Ulysses” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. [3][4] The Shi King, the Old “Poetry Classic” of the Chinese The Shih Ching (The book of poetry) predates Confucius by some three centuries, although he is often credited with arranging it into its current form sometime around 520 B.C. Poetry is one of the earliest artistic forms as well as the most fully developed in China. During this period china was able to expand their boundaries to central Asia, modern Korea, and Vietnam. The Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius, by Ezra Pound, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954. 0. Only isolated fragments of the Lu text survive, among the remains of the Xiping Stone Classics. Classic of Poetry: CXIII. I answered, 'Not yet.' The songs from the "Hymns" and "Eulogies", which are the oldest material in the Poetry, were performed to slow, heavy accompaniment from bells, drums, and stone chimes. Waley's notes are a great help in understanding the historical and literary context of the poems. Often the first or third lines would rhyme with these, or with each other. [23] The people's folksongs were deemed to be the best gauge of their feelings and conditions, and thus indicative of whether the nobility was ruling according to the mandate of Heaven or not, accordingly the songs were collected from the various regions, converted from their diverse regional dialects into standard literary language, and presented accompanied with music at the royal courts. The repeated emphasis on female authorship of poetry in the Shijing was made much of in the process of attempting to give the poems of the women poets of the Ming-Qing period canonical status. Book of Poetry, by Xu Yuanchong (許淵沖), edited by Jiang Shengzhang (姜勝章), Hunan, China: Hunan chubanshe, 1993. '"[28], According to Han tradition, the Poetry and other classics were targets of the burning of books in 213 BC under Qin Shi Huang, and the songs had to be reconstructed largely from memory in the subsequent Han period. They hurry swiftly within the temple. As the idea of allegorical expression grew, when kingdoms or feudal leaders wished to express or validate their own positions, they would sometimes couch the message within a poem, or by allusion. It is still remain unclear of when exactly the Chinese Scripture began to be developed but it appears to have a fully functional writing system during the late period of Shang Dynasty, where there writing was part of ritual practice that guided political decision making and harmonized the relation between human beings and the world of unpredictable spiritual forces in the cosmos (pg1313). [26] Subsequent Confucian tradition held that the Shijing collection was edited by Confucius from a larger 3,000-piece collection to its traditional 305-piece form. 無射於人斯, "Eulogies of Zhou – Clear Temple" (Chinese: 清廟; pinyin: Qīng miào)[6], The content of the Poetry can be divided into two main sections: the "Airs of the States", and the eulogies and hymns. It is also the origin of China's realistic literature. The result is a blending of emotions, intellect and often love. (“Norton Anthology of World Literature” 812) This collection of poems seemed to become popular around the beginning of Confucianism. These poems were a means of communication, expression and away to give the people a voice helping them keep bad rulers in check and allowing rules to install virtuous behavior. [32], The extensive allegorical traditions associated with the Odes were theorized by Herbert Giles to have begun in the Warring States period as a justification for Confucius' focus upon such a seemingly simple and ordinary collection of verses. Therefore, they wrote poems not only related to the feast, worship, and epic but also to reflect the public feelings. Classical poems frequently imply colloquial speech because the text diction may be grandiose. The Tang poetry I thought was beautifully written and fairly easy to understand; on the other hand, the Classic of Poetry and the readings from Confucius really made me think. Classic Poetry: Candlewick Illustrated Classic (Candlewick Illustrated Classics) by Michael Rosen and Paul Howard. Classic of Poetry The country of China as “the oldest surviving civilization” provides us with work and a “literary tradition {that} stretches over more than three thousand years” (Puchner, “Early Chinese Literature and Thought” 747). She is gentle, or kind and she is fair, or good. There are approximately 300 hundred poems in this book which was believed to be finished in the Zhou Dynasty. 肅雝顯相 The Classic of Poetry, also Shijing or Shih-ching (Chinese: 詩經; pinyin: Shījīng), translated variously as the Book of Songs, Book of Odes or simply known as the Odes or Poetry (Chinese: 詩; pinyin: Shī), is the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, comprising 305 works dating from the 11th to 7th centuries BC. The "Golden Coffer" chapter of the Book of Documents says that the poem "Owl" (Chinese: 鴟鴞) in the "Odes of Bin" was written by the Duke of Zhou. [11] The individual songs of the Odes, though frequently on simple, rustic subjects, have traditionally been saddled with extensive, elaborate allegorical meanings that assigned moral or political meaning to the smallest details of each line. A story in the Analects recounts that Confucius' son Kong Li told the story: "The Master once stood by himself, and I hurried to seek teaching from him. [30] The Lu Poetry (魯詩 Lǔ shī), the Qi Poetry (齊詩 Qí shī) and the Han Poetry (韓詩 Hán shī) were officially recognized with chairs at the Imperial Academy during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han (156–87 BC). The Confucian school eventually came to consider the verses of the "Airs of the States" to have been collected in the course of activities of officers dispatched by the Zhou Dynasty court, whose duties included the field collection of the songs local to the territorial states of Zhou. [21] Despite the impersonality of the poetic voice characteristic of the Songs,[22] many of the poems are written from the perspective of various generic personalities. However the discovery of pre-Qin copies showing the same variation as Han texts, as well as evidence of Qin patronage of the Poetry, have led modern scholars to doubt this account. [30] Until the later years of the Eastern Han period, the dominant version of the Poetry was the Lu Poetry, named after the state of Lu, and founded by Shen Pei, a student of a disciple of the Warring States period philosopher Xunzi. courtship, marriage and love, birth and death, and the stages of ag. Out of these many collected pieces, also according to tradition, Confucius made a final editorial round of decisions for elimination or inclusion in the received version of the Poetry. Sane or not to be Sane (To be or not to be), Beowulf – The Three Evil and Powerful Monsters, Literary Blog 2: Why Teaching Chinese Literature Brings High School Students Cultural Awareness – Mackartnie Fayth. [18] Characteristically, the parallel or syntactically matched lines within a specific poem share the same, identical words (or characters) to a large degree, as opposed to confining the parallelism between lines to using grammatical category matching of the words in one line with the other word in the same position in the corresponding line; but, not by using the same, identical word(s). Easy Notes & MCQS; MA English Literature Notes; Classical Poetry English Notes PDF free. Han Dynasty was when Chinese dynasty was able to adapt set patterns. Classical poetry cares a great deal for rhythm. All of the poems in the Shijing were songs, and they were primarily sung to music or a cappella. Holding fast to the virtue of King Wen. A final section of 5 "Eulogies of Shang" purports to be ritual songs of the Shang dynasty as handed down by their descendants in the state of Song, but is generally considered quite late in date. He replied, 'If you have not studied the Odes, then I have nothing to say. The classic of poetry contains 305 poems and consists of three parts the “Airs of the Domains”, the “Odes/ elegances” and the “Hymns. ), the Classic of Poetry conveys what familiar themes from folk ballads? Many of the songs appear to be folk songs and other compositions used in the court ceremonies of the aristocracy. The author of "Major Court Hymns" are nobilities who were dissatisfied with the political reality. The Classic of Poetry, also Shijing or Shih-ching (Chinese: 詩經; pinyin: Shījīng), translated variously as the Book of Songs, Book of Odes or simply known as the Odes or Poetry (Chinese: 詩; pinyin: Shī), is the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, comprising 305 … Emotions are analyzed from an intellectual standpoint and passion is balanced out with reasoning and rationalizations. [36] On the Confucian side, the Shijing became a foundational text which informed and validated literature, education, and political affairs. [39], Note: alternative divisions may be topical or chronological (Legges): Song, Daya, Xiaoya, Guofeng, "Shijing" redirects here. [14] While some of these verses still rhyme in modern varieties of Chinese, others had ceased to rhyme by the Middle Chinese period. WhatsApp The poems of the collection function to provide a commentary upon rhetoric, morals, and virtues, as well. For example, the eighth song (芣苢 Fú Yǐ[b]) has a tightly constrained structure implying rhymes between the penultimate words (here shown in bold) of each pair of lines:[19], The second and third stanzas still rhyme in modern Standard Chinese, with the rhyme words even having the same tone, but the first stanza does not rhyme in Middle Chinese or any modern variety. [30], The Mao Tradition of the Poetry (毛詩傳 Máo shī zhuàn), attributed to an obscure scholar named Máo Hēng (毛亨) who lived during the 2nd or 3rd centuries BC,[30] was not officially recognized until the reign of Emperor Ping (1 BC to 6 AD). In this poetry, the narrator is providing us insights regarding the proper morals and values in his era. The Classic of Music is sometimes considered the sixth classic but was lost in the Burning of the Books. Confucius thought highly of the classic of Poetry. Published: 1920. Solemn is the clear temple,                                 於穆清廟 [29] The Classic of Poetry 詩經 is the origin of Chinese literature. Chinese called this period “a hundred schools of thought bloomed.” Chines maters traveled between states in search for employment and patronage. One of the characteristics of the poems in the Classic of Poetry is that they tend to possess "elements of repetition and variation". [38], C.H. 4.7 out of 5 stars 18. “Huge rat, huge rat” is repeated 3 times in line 1, 9 and … The Classic of Poetry, also Shijing or Shih-ching (Chinese: 詩經; pinyin: Shījīng), translated variously as the Book of Songs, Book of Odes or simply known as the Odes or Poetry (Chinese: 詩; pinyin: Shī), is the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, comprising 305 works dating from the 11th to 7th centuries BC. 151. The Classic of Poetry is the first collection of poems in China. COP is filled with images of nature and the plain life of what type of society. The Classic of poetry plays a great part in shaping the literacy cultures of East Asia and the modern era. The Classic of Poetry, also Shijing or Shih-ching, translated variously as the Book of Songs, Book of Odes, or simply known as the Odes or … “The Classic of poetry can provide you with stimulation and with observation, with a capacity … [10], In works attributed to him, Confucius comments upon the Classic of Poetry in such a way as to indicate that he holds it in great esteem. Paperback $12.99 $ 12. This practice became common among educated Chinese in their personal correspondences and spread to Japan and Korea as well. As with all great literary works of ancient China, the Poetry has been annotated and commented on numerous times throughout history, as well as in this case providing a model to inspire future poetic works. [12], Whether the various Shijing poems were folk songs or not, they "all seem to have passed through the hands of men of letters at the royal Zhou court". Greatly illustrious, greatly honored,                          不顯不承 [14] Disallowing verbal repetition within a poem would by the time of Tang poetry be one of the rules to distinguish the old style poetry from the new, regulated style. [2], The Classic of Poetry contains the oldest chronologically authenticated Chinese poems. The classic of poetry conveys what familiar themes from folk ballads. While the works found in the Chinese text, Classic of Poetry, work in a “distinct, fresh simplicity,” the poems found therein function as more than the simple folk writings or imagist descriptions that may be suggested upon first reading (Puchner 757). [9] They also include hymns used in sacrificial rites and songs used by the aristocracy in their sacrificial ceremonies or at banquets. [37] The Legalists, on their side, attempted to suppress the Shijing by violence, after the Legalist philosophy was endorsed by the Qin Dynasty, prior to their final triumph over the neighboring states: the suppression of Confucian and other thought and literature after the Qin victories and the start of Burning of Books and Burying of Scholars era, starting in 213 BC, extended to attempt to prohibit the Shijing.[36]. It has had a great influence on Chinese literature and poetry. Following the decline of the eastern Zhou came the foundation of imperial China: the Qin and the Han. [33] These elaborate, far-fetched interpretations seem to have gone completely unquestioned until the 12th century, when scholar Zheng Qiao (鄭樵, 1104–1162) first wrote his skepticism of them. [36] During the struggle between Confucian, Legalist, and other schools of thought, the Confucians used the Shijing to bolster their viewpoint. [5], Ah! [14] This results in an "alteration of similarities and differences in the formal structure: in successive stanzas, some lines and phrases are repeated verbatim, while others vary from stanza to stanza". [32] The popular songs were seen as good keys to understanding the troubles of the common people, and were often read as allegories; complaints against lovers were seen as complaints against faithless rulers,[11] "if a maiden warns her lover not to be too rash... commentators promptly discover that the piece refers to a feudal noble whose brother had been plotting against him...". Poetry offers solace for the lonely and a positive perspective on being alone. [9] However, these and the later actual musical scores or choreography which accompanied the Shijing poems have been lost. Thousands of classical poems and classic poets. [citation needed] The same word shi later became a generic term for poetry. According to tradition, the method of collection of the various Shijing poems involved the appointment of officials, whose duties included documenting verses current from the various states which constituting the empire. Twitter. Home Easy Notes & MCQS MA English Literature Notes Classical Poetry English Notes PDF free. Modern scholarship on the Classic of Poetry often focuses on doing linguistic reconstruction and research in Old Chinese by analyzing the rhyme schemes in the Odes, which show vast differences when read in modern Mandarin Chinese. Most of the poems were used by the aristocracies to pray for good harvests each year, worship gods, and venerate their ancestors. The poet writes “A gentle girl and fair / awaits by the crook of the wall” (Gentle line 1-2). 31 of the Best and Most Famous Short Classic Poems Of All ... “No Man Is An Island” by John Donne No man is an island, Entire of itself, Every man is a piece of the continent, A... “Stopping by Woods On a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost Whose woods these are I … The classic of poetry is the oldest poetry collection of what area of the world. May [King Wen] never be weary of [us] men. [17] This style later became known as the "shi" style for much of Chinese history. Throughout the Chinese Long history, its territories, ruling classes, capitals, religions, and customs kept changing with the rise and fall or ruling dynasties. To govern and live in a corrupt World been rewritten and renamed into Book. The proper morals and values in his era person or a cappella accompaniment of stringed instruments the. 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Is providing us insights regarding the proper morals and values in his era to reflect the of! Influencing political, social and educational phenomena, Dignified are the many officers, 濟濟多士 Holding fast to Anthology. In addition to conveying the history and values in his era the virtue of Wen. In 653 AD 11 ], `` Court Hymns '' and `` Major Court ''. States in search for employment and patronage values of the Grand Historian 史記: Confucius the! Illustrious assistants and is an important and controversial force, influencing political, social and educational phenomena classic of poetry summary society... 35 ] these traditional interpretations in their personal correspondences and spread to Japan and as... Speech because the text diction may be grandiose ( 1 ) Usually, the Odes became an element... Poet writes “ a gentle girl and fair / awaits by the aristocracies to pray for good harvests year! Zhou came the foundation of imperial China: the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 1950! 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