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The term refers to a state of mind in the process of literary and artistic creation. It suggests that the author, fully inspired by emotions, transcends the constraint of time and space, and enters into a state of free imagination or a special mood for literary and artistic creation, before producing a natural and beautiful work of literature or art, either in language or in imagery. This term was popularly used in literary and artistic theories of the Wei, Jin, and Southern and Northern dynasties. Liu Xie （465？-520）of the Southern Dynasties devoted one chapter especially to this term in The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons. Imaginative contemplation is the unique mental activity in literary and artistic
creation, different from other cognitive activities.
The term has four meanings. First, it indicates a deity in a personified sense, possessing superhuman capabilities. Natural things, such as heaven and earth, mountains and rivers, sun and moon, and stars, have their deity. A human soul may also become a deity after death. Second, it indicates the human spirit and mind. Daoism considers “spirit” to be the dominating factor in human life. Therefore, maintaining and refining the spirit is most important to prolong life. Third, it indicates the subtle and unfathomable changing of all things as well as heaven and earth occurring under the interaction of yin and yang. In this sense the term is often used together with hua (化 change), the combination being called “divine change.” Fourth, it indicates a marvelous and unfathomable realm in life attained by a person.
The term means the ability to reflect and evaluate. Confucian scholars considered this a unique quality of the human mind. By reflecting, a person will keep himself from being led astray or getting confused by what he sees or hears. Through reflecting, a person will discover the foundation of morality. This leads to understanding the way of heaven, and eventually, the essence of being human. Without reflecting, humans will lose their individual consciousness and independence.
The term describes a state of mind one achieves when appreciating an artwork, in which process one’s inner feelings interact freely and joyfully with nature. In particular, it describes one’s aesthetic experience of appreciating landscape paintings and landscape poems, when one feels absorbed with the natural scenes and images depicted. In his “On the Creation of Landscape Painting,” Zong Bing (375-443), painter of the Southern Dynasties, pointed out that by watching landscape paintings, one can appreciate the philosophy and pleasure which sages of past times drew from landscape. When doing so, one becomes oblivious to the external world and is totally free from worldly considerations, thus achieving full satisfaction of both body and mind. This term not only reveals the unique aesthetic function of landscape paintings, landscape poems, and natural beauty, but also demonstrates traditional literature and arts’ pursuit of harmony between nature and man and between mind and heart.
This term refers to the creative process through which a writer interacts with subject matter and gives free rein to his imagination. During the process, he projects onto real objects his mental sensations and imaginings, and endows them with an aesthetic tone. Conversely, his imaginary sensations and imaginings are given concrete expression by real objects. The free interaction between mind and subject matter, transcending the limitations of space and time, creates a superb artistic work depicted in language. The term originated in the words of “taking advantage of the circumstances to let your mind wander freely” in Zhuangzi. Later, this idea was systematically developed by Liu Xie（465？—520） in The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons during the Southern Dynasties to describe imaginative contemplation. The term stresses the importance of interaction between the mind and the poetic subject matter as well as free imagination in the process of artistic creation. It demonstrates the process of thinking in artistic creation and succinctly summarizes the underlying features of aesthetic appreciation and freedom in artistic creation.
This is an important term about literary style that stresses the unity and integration of the styles of writings with the temperaments of their authors. The term originated by Liu Xie (465?-520) of the Southern Dynasties in his The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons. One chapter of the book discusses how the styles of writings are related to the temperaments of the writers, and argues that the writings truly reflect the temperaments of their authors. This has encouraged later generations to analyze different styles of literary works based on the authors’ temperaments and became a basic line of thought on ancient Chinese literary style.
This term refers to powerful expressiveness and artistic impact that come from a literary work’s purity of thoughts and emotions, as well as from its meticulously crafted structure. Despite some difference in interpreting the term, people tend to agree that fenggu (风骨) can be understood as being lucid and fresh in language while sturdy in structure. Feng (风) means “style,” which emphasizes that a literary work should be based on pure thoughts, vivid impressions, and rich emotions so as to produce an effect of powerful expressiveness. Gu (骨) means “bones” or proper structure, figuratively. It stresses the impact of structure and sentence order, requiring a piece of writing to be robust, vigorous, profound, and yet succinct. If a piece of work is wordy and overly rhetorical but weak in content, then it lacks the impact of a “proper structure,” no matter how flowery its expressions are. If such writing is awkward in delivery and has no emotions and vitality, then it lacks expressiveness in “style.” Fenggu does not preclude, but rather combines with linguistic elegance in order to create a piece of good work. Good command of fenggu depends on the personality and dispositions of the author. In The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, Liu Xie （465？-520? or 532?）of the Southern Dynasties devoted a chapter to the discussion of fenggu, which is the first essay on writing style in the history of classical Chinese literary criticism.
The term refers to a classical Chinese literary style generally known as “parallel prose,” largely composed of couplets of phrases with similar structure. Monosyllabic Chinese words, each represented with a single written character, are fairly easy to arrange in pairs of expressions with semantic symmetry and prosodic harmony. The ornate parallel style highlights the beauty of the form of the language without neglecting the harmony between form and content; and it is employed to produce fine works of utmost beauty, with form and content reinforcing each other.
The term refers to the use of exaggeration and embellishment in a literary work to enhance its artistic appeal. When used as appropriate, exaggeration and embellishment can achieve an artistic effect beyond that of realistic descriptions. However, if overused, it will create the opposite effect, making the writing too flowery to be credible. Therefore, the literary critics of old China believed that excessive use of exaggeration and embellishment should be avoided.
This term means that prose and poetry may contain latent sentiments and thoughts, as well as expressions and sentences that present an apparent sense of beauty. “Latent sentiment and evident beauty” first appeared as the title of a chapter in The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons. There, “latent sentiment” means what lies beyond events and landscapes in a narrative or a description, triggering imaginations on the part of the reader. On the other hand, “evident beauty” refers to the kind of beauty created by expressions and sentences in a piece of writing, which bring out that latent meaning. The latent and the apparent qualities are inseparable, constituting an aesthetic feature of good literary works. Later, this term developed into a rhetorical device in writing prose and poetry.
This term suggests cultivating one’s moral spirit and improving one’s physical and mental well-being to achieve the best state of mind in order to write excellent works. “Cultivating qi (气)” has three implications: 1) in the pre-Qin period Mencius (372?-289 BC) emphasized that the virtuous and the capable should foster a “noble spirit” conducive to moral cultivation; 2) A Comparative Study of Different Schools of Learning by Wang Chong (27-97?) of the Eastern Han Dynasty has a chapter entitled “Treatise on Cultivating Qi,” which emphasizes qi cultivation primarily in regards to maintaining good health; 3) Liu Xie (465?-520) of the Southern Dynasties, in The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, drew upon the foregoing ideas and suggested maintaining good physical condition and a free, composed mental state in the initial phase of literary creation, while opposing excessive mental exertion. “Cultivating qi” subsequently became an important term in the lexicon of literary psychology.
The term suggests that literary creation is affected by changes of the times. Author and literary scholar Liu Xie (465？-520) of the Southern Dynasties who used this term pointed out that literary creation is not an isolated phenomenon. Rather, it is affected by numerous historical factors, such as the prevailing social and political conditions, the personal preferences of rulers, as well as intellectual trends.
The term is about appreciating and understanding the ideas in literary and artistic works and the thoughts of their authors. The original meaning was feeling a sense of resonance with music. It was later extended by literary critics in the Wei, Jin, and Southern and Northern dynasties to mean resonance or empathy between writers / artists and their readers / viewers. As a core concept in literary criticism, it touches upon both general and particular issues in artistic creation and appreciation, involves rich intellectual implications, and meshes with the audience’s response in Western criticism, receptive aesthetics, and hermeneutics.
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