Classical Chinese Poetry - History and Development

History and Development

The stylistic development of Classical Chinese poetry consists of both literary and oral cultural processes, which may be and usually are divided into certain standard periods or eras, in terms both of specific poems as well as styles characteristic of those eras, generally corresponding with Chinese Dynastic Eras, which were the traditional chronological process for Chinese historical events. The poems preserved in written form form the poetic literature. Furthermore, there is or were parallel traditions of oral and traditional poetry also known as popular or folk poems or ballads. Some of these poems seem to have been preserved in written form. Generally, the folk type of poems they are anonymous, and may show signs of having been edited or polished in the process of fixing them in written characters. The main source sources for the earliest preserved poems are the Classic of Poetry, or Shijing and the Songs of the South (or, Chuci), although some individual pieces or fragments survive in other forms, for example embedded in classical histories or other literature.