Chu Ci - Prosody and Style

Prosody and Style

The poems of the Chu Ci anthology are mostly of the seven-syllable form, and are formed in a way distinct from the Shi Jing (Classic of Poetry), and helping to form a different source of textual tradition in Chinese literature, representing more of the southern than the northern traditions of ancient times. Within the individual songs or poems of the Chu Ci, lines generally consist of three syllables followed by the word 兮 (pinyin: xī, Old Chinese: *gˤe), which indicates a type of caesura, and then another three syllables. This contrasts distinctly with the classic four-character verse of the Shi Jing, and adds a different rhythmic latitude of expression. Furthermore, the verses of the Chu Ci would have been recited using pronunciations of the southern dialect of Chu, in the Yangzi River region; unlike the poems of the Shi Jing, which were sung in the more northerly Yellow River area dialects. Some the vocabulary and the characters themselves also vary from the typical northern literature. The poems of the Chu Ci remain as a major factor in the study of Classical Chinese poetry, cultural, and linguistic history: the various poems or prose-poems influenced subsequent literature, such as the poetry of the Han Dynasty, as well as subsequent Classical Chinese poetry, in the saoti (騷體) style of prosody as seen in the "Epilog" of the Cantong qi (the "Luanci" 亂辭), and as in the selected the material for inclusion into anthologies such as the Guwen Guanzhi.