Search

From the Qin dynasty on there were two opinions about the merchant-measant relations: one was physiocracy and the other was equivalency. Influenced by the two opinions, Chinese ancient poetry had changed for three times. Firstly, since the physiocracy had been weakened in the mid-Tang dynasty, the thought that merchant should have the same status as peasant appeared in the poetry creation, leaning to an idea of physiocracy. In the second, the scholars in the Song dynasty, such as Fan Zhongyan, Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi, adopted the thought of equivalency, but they stressed on the government policies. And the last, breaking through physiocracy and the idea of "stronger merchants will hurt peasants" some artists like Tang Yin, Xu Wei and Wang Shizhen, in the mid-Ming dynasty did agree with the merchants in thought of "living for pleasure" which got responses in their poems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The academic controversy over the "origin of ci" has lasted over a thousand years throughout the study of this Chinese poetic genre. According to their own account by literati of the Tang dynasty, ci was collected from folks of the fields for both its phrase and tune. But since the Song dynasty, different arguments have arisen. Some held that ci had its origin in the so-called "long-and-short lines", while others postulated "phrase-filling in uniform tunes"; still others believed in its derivation from "foreign-tune with Chinese phrase". Starting from the 20th century, the focus of debate shifted to whether ci had evolved from native vernacular songs or been invented for new tunes, and, if the latter was true, whether the tune came from abroad (Hu (These character(s) cannot be represented in ASCII text)) or within China (Hua (These character(s) cannot be represented in ASCII text)). However, all these arguments have some theoretical flaws resulting from: (i) an isolated and undefined academic context and research orientation; (ii) a method of substituting the part for the whole, which may have distorted the true picture of Chinese-foreign music exchange; (iii) the false premise that new tunes gave rise to new genres of poetry; and (iv) the disregard of the reality in learning and spread of ci performance and composition, and neglect of the role played by social changes and human subjectivity in the budding of new literary genres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the end of the Ming dynasty the initiative was taken in the edition that collected together for complete works the total output of literature by period. The practice remained up to the Qing dynasty when there came out Quantangshi and Quantangwen, etc., and commanded popular attention in academic circles. And since modern times Chinese scholars have poured out tremendous enthusiasm for the compilation of such types of works especially for the last twenty years. The works, to their knowledge, have achieved more than forty types, which were published one after another or whose compilations are well under way. The range almost includes works of all genres composed in different historical period. Such publications in vast number are by no means certain to exert a dominant influence on the twenty-first century study of Chinese literature and history, and scholars should place the overwhelming importance on some common problems that have come up from such compilations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]