A Brief Introduction to Ancient CHINESE POETRY(中国古代诗歌简介).doc

A Brief Introduction to Ancient CHINESE POETRY Chinese poetry has its origin from Shijing (詩經) or Book of Songs. It was the first major collection of Chinese poems, consisting mostly folksongs (the Songs). They are composed of four-character (四言) lines. It comprises 305 poems, covering the period from eleven century to six century B.C. Some of the most popular ones are taught in schools nowadays. With the help of some annotations they are not difficult to understand and appreciate despite their antiquity. Poetry is the most popular form of literature since the beginning of written Chinese and is still popular today. It has developed into many forms throughout history and reached its zenith in the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 A.D.) when poetry was the main subject in the imperial civil examination. In our present time anyone who has gone to school can recite some of them. The classical forms of poetry mostly consist of lines of five-character (五言) or seven-character (七言) poems with special rules concerning rhythm, rhyme, tone and balance. Chinese poetry has several distinct features which are derived from the special features of the Chinese language. Chinese is a monosyllabic language. Each character has a single sound. ?Putonghua (or Mandarin) which is the official language and the most common one, has four tones. The sound of a character can be represented by one to three musical notes. Each character sounds like a beat in music. We can see that the Chinese classical form of poetry is very musical. Let us take a seven-word-line poem from late Tang Dynasty (9th century). The words are simple and so is the story that any primary school student today can understand it. It is a poem that can illustrate the basic features of classical poetry. (Note 1)Chinese: ??????去 ???年 ?/ ???今 ?????日 / ???此 ????门 ????中，Meaning of ???Last ?year ??/ ??to-day ???/ ?this ???door ??centre,each word: Pinyin: ???qu (\) nian(/) ?/ ?jin(--) ??ri(\) ?/ ?ci(--) ??Men(/) ?zhong(--)?????????