This term refers to a poetic style popular for about 30 years from the early to mid-Western Jin Dynasty, particularly in the Taikang era (280–289) during the reign of Emperor Wu. Among the poets of this tradition were Zuo Si (250?-305?), Pan Yue (247-300), and Lu Ji (261-303). Taikang poets focused excessively on the use of rhetorical description, verbal parallelism, and refined poetic techniques, representing an abrupt departure from the Jian’an (196-220)poetry with its passion, boldness, and vitality. Standing out among the Taikang poets was Zuo Si, who used plain language, but whose works had substance and were imbued with passion and strength.
Ti (体) has three different meanings in the study of literature, art, and aesthetics. First, it refers to features that distinguish one particular category, form, or literary school from others. These features represent the overall form and artistic characteristics, including the structure, content, language, style, and other essential elements. Second, it refers only to literary and artistic style, not their form or shape. Third, it refers to the basic literary and artistic form, i.e., the writing style and literary genre. Scholars of literary theory in different historical periods did not use the same standards to classify literary styles. For example, Xiao Tong (501-531, Crown Prince Zhaoming of the Liang Dynasty during the Southern Dynasties) classified literary and artistic works into 38 styles or categories in his Selections of Refined Literature. There is a wide range of writing styles and literary genres in classical Chinese literature, each with its own style and writing requirements. The style of a literary work reflects the author’s individual artistic temperament, and, sometimes, also the literary and artistic trend in a particular era. This term is often used together with the name of a person or a dynasty to describe literary and artistic features peculiar to a school of literature. Examples are the Sao Style (represented by the famous poem, Li Sao, written by renowned poet Qu Yuan), Tao Style (represented by poet Tao Yuanming), and Jian’an Style (named after the period of Jian’an during the Han Dynasty). The term is widely used in literary criticism and appreciation.
The term refers to the differentiation of the form and style of a literary work. It means that before putting words on paper, one needs to decide on the form and style appropriate to the thoughts and feelings to be expressed so as to produce a fine literary work with a high degree of harmony between form and content. In creating literary works, ancient scholars tended to decide on the style before writing. Literary critics in the Wei, Jin, and Southern and Northern dynasties discussed in detail the artistic features and rules of all literary styles and stressed that authors must choose an appropriate form or style to express their thoughts and sentiments and strictly follow the rules of the style, language form, and writing technique required by the chosen form or style. This, they believed, was the only way to create excellent literary works. Contrary to the term “style differentiation,” the term poti (破体) or “breaking-down styles” refers to the integration of different styles or forms of literary works by breaking down their boundaries. Style differentiation sometimes refers to differentiating the form or style of a literary work in order to attain a lofty character and realm of literature.
This refers mainly to the five-character-a-line poems of the Han and Wei dynasties in Selections of Refined Literature compiled by Xiao Tong (501-531), Crown Prince Zhaoming of the Liang Dynasty during the Southern Dynasties. Later, this term meant not just a specific type of poetry, but also both the prevailing poetic features of an era and general poetic style. Poems of this style were regarded as in the same rank as yuefu (乐府) poetry, which were folk songs and ballads collected and compiled by the Han government office in charge of musical preservation, or any poetic imitation equally suitable for musical composition, as well as gexing (歌行), which were odes to events or physical objects in free-verse form, and lüjüe (律绝), or poetry with fixed patterns. To poetic critics in later generations, xuanti (选体) poetry was synonymous with five-character poetry and was a standard way to write poems with five characters per line. In terms of style, it is elegant, richly colorful, and innovative. This type of poetry inherited the poetic tradition all the way from The Book of Songs and Odes of Chu to the Han and Wei dynasties, the Jin Dynasty, and the Song, Qi, and Liang during the Southern Dynasties. From the Tang Dynasty onward, many literary critics used the term “xuanti poetry” as a standard in their comments on poetry. This poetic style was criticized later by some creative-minded poets for its excessive emphasis on following the classical tradition.
Poetic songs were developed from the officially collected folk ballads and songs of the Han, Wei and the Six Dynasties. They are characterized by great length, bold expression of feeling, diverse sentence patterns and laxity of the requirements of metrical forms. They followed the classic forms of five characters to a line, seven characters to a line and a mixed pattern in a flexible manner. This genre was established by Southern Dynasty poet Bao Zhao(414?-466) who drew inspiration from folk songs. Tang Dynasty poets Li Bai(701-762) and Bai Juyi(772-846) also wrote poems in such style.
Yuefu (乐府) poems were written in the Han Dynasty. Originally, yuefu was a government office set up by the imperial court to train musicians, collect folk songs and ballads, compose music, and match musical instruments to it. It later came to refer to folk songs and ballads collected, matched with music, and played by court musicians. Poems of this style represented a new creation of ancient folk songs and ballads in the years after The Book of Songs was compiled, and equaled The Book of Songs and Odes of Chu in importance. About 50 to 60 yuefu poems have been handed down to this day. They truthfully depicted various aspects of society at the time and revealed genuine emotions, thus creating a literary tradition reflecting ordinary people’s sentiments. In particular, yuefu poems were noted for their vivid depiction of women’s life. All poems that could be chanted or were written with yuefu themes were collectively called yuefu poems in later times.
The term refers to the literary style of the final years of the State of Wei in the Three Kingdoms period. It emerged in the Zhengshi era (240–249) under the reign of Cao Fang(232-274), also known as Prince Qi of Wei. Facing the harsh prevailing political conditions, literary figures of the era viewed life and the world in a broader and philosophical context, and profound and rational analysis as well as penetrating depiction of human tragedies were underlying features of their writings. Reverence for Laozi and Zhuangzi was a key feature of this literary style, with poetry, in particular, being abstruse and philosophical in terms of message. The Zhengshi style had two schools. One was represented by He Yan (?-249) and Wang Bi (226- 249), whose works heralded the Jin-dynasty metaphysical poetry. The other school, represented by literary figures like Ji Kang (223-262 or 224-263) and Ruan Ji (210-263), was more influential. Building on the Jian’an literary tradition, they conveyed in their writings profound thought and emotions, and gave vivid expression to social life at the time with intense individual characteristics.
Poems of this style first emerged during the reign of Emperor Wu of Qi of the Southern Dynasties. That period, lasting from 483 to 493, assumed the regal title of Yongming, hence the name of this poetic style. Yongming poems featured metrical structure and parallelism. They were also known as the “new poetry,” as opposed to the “old poetry” of the Han Dynasty and the Wei period. Xie Tiao (464-499), Shen Yue (441-513), and Wang Rong (467-493) were leading poets of the Yongming style. This style was marked by a poet’s deft use of metrical structure and parallelism, thus enhancing the stylistic beauty and artistic expressiveness of poetry. It laid the foundation for the emergence of the “early modern” poetry, or regulated verse. However, the Yongming poetic style was weakened by an excessive emphasis on tonal patterns at the cost of content, drawing criticism of some poetry critics of the time. The style was thus burdened by this inherent risk in its quest for innovation.
This poetic style pursued rhetorical beauty and symmetrical structure. In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, poets such as Yang Yi (974-1020), Liu Yun (970-1030), and Qian Weiyan (977-1034) gathered in the emperor's private library to compile Important Mirrors for Governance, a book that records the activities of monarchs and their ministers in all previous dynasties. During spare time, they wrote poems to each other. Later, they put these poems into a collection titled A Collection of Xikun Poems. (Xikun, in an ancient Chinese legend, was a place where books of emperors were supposedly housed, thus the title for their collected poems.) Xikun style poets drew inspiration from Li Shangyin(813?-858?), who was meticulous about the use of allusions and whose poems had subtle appeal. These poets prized metrical rigor and metonymy. Their works were exquisite in diction, highly rhythmical, and strictly parallel, doing away with the insipid and shallow features of poetic style in the late Tang as well as the following Five Dynasties and Ten States period. Xikun style poetry exerted a considerable influence on poetry writing in the later periods. However, being written impromptu just to echo each other, such poems tend to be overly polished and lacking in true sentiments, and their vanity was frowned upon by later critics.