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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 notion of enthralling charm carries a variety of meanings, such as symmetry, beauty, splendor, and attachment. It highlights the formal aesthetic features of magnificence, intricate beauty, and colorfulness, thus forming a major component of classical Chinese aesthetics. Stylistically, this term indicates elegance and majestic beauty. When referring to calligraphy, it suggests a nuanced taste and a delicate charm beyond the Chinese characters' external structures, arousing one's sense of beauty. When referring to music, enthralling charm appears in a miraculous melody, calling to mind a classical grace and serenity.
This term refers to verses original in theme, sincere in feeling, distinctive in image, and refreshing in diction. “Refreshing” stands opposed to ornate phrases and excessive literary quotations, and indicates both fresh and natural expressions as well as elegant style and subtle aesthetic conception. What “exquisite” indicates is not that the wording itself is resplendent, but that there is complete freedom from vulgarity, and that the imagery is sharp with real sentiments. As a poetic term, it refers to the general feature of a poem, including its linguistic style.
This term refers to a literary writing style that is ornate and flowery in diction and excessively detailed and exhaustive in description, in contrast to being “simple and concise.” The tendency to write elaborately about an idea in ornate language first emerged in the Western Jin Dynasty, represented by the writings of Lu Ji (261-303). His works were rich in allusions and antitheses, meticulous in diction and description, and elaborate and ornate in style. At the same time, these writings suffered from a lack of clarity and novelty. During the Qi and Liang of the Southern Dynasties, this overly elaborative style was listed as one of the eight major literary styles in Liu Xie’s (465?-520? or 532?) The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons.
The term is used to describe an excessively exquisite artistic work as if it were an object painted in bright colors and inlaid with gold and silver. In the literary context, it refers to poems written in a highly rhetorical style. Aesthetically, what is “gilded and colored” is considered undesirable, and the style of “lotus rising out of water” is preferred. The former focuses only on external form and appearance, whereas the latter, as a natural presentation of aesthetic ideas, penetrates appearances and brings out the essence.
The term of lotus rising out of water describes a scene of freshness, quiet refinement and natural beauty, in contrast to “gilded and colored” embellishments. During the Wei and Jin dynasties, people valued nature and favored this aesthetic view. In their artistic creations, they pursued the natural and fresh style like lotus rising out of water. They sought natural presentation of their ideas and were opposed to excessive ornamentation.
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.
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.
This term refers to improving a literary work by refining its basic content and making the presentation concise. Refining and deleting is a basic process in literary writing. The term was first mentioned by Liu Xie (465?-520) of the Southern Dynasties in his The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons. It means that in producing a literary work, the author should select the right elements from all the material he has, delete unnecessary parts and keep the essence, and write in a concise way to best present what he has in mind and to best suit the styles of writing. It shows that literary creation is a process of constantly striving for perfection in terms of both content and form. This idea had a great impact on the theory of theatrical writing in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
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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