"Ancient Literature" Zhong Rong's poetic theory

Zhang Xuecheng commented in the "Literature and History Of Theory": "The "Poetry" is to discuss poetry, and the "Wenxin Carved Dragon" is to the thesis, all of which are specialized masters, and Le is the ancestor of the first book." The content discussed in the "Poetry" is poetry, which is the founding father of Chinese poetry.

Regarding the motivation for the creation of "Poetry", Zhong Rong and Liu Xun are basically the same: they are dissatisfied with the creation and criticism at that time. Dissatisfaction with the creation is the use of classics, the sound of the palace business, and the complexity of the coincidence. Dissatisfaction with criticism is, first, criticism of the book's "does not show merit" and "zeng has no quality". The first is that there is no standard for verbal criticism. Hence the "feeling of doing".

Zhong Rong commented on the poetry, emphasizing the emotion of poetry, believing that the essence of poetry lies in the "temperament of chanting". In terms of ideological origin, Zhong Rong's proposition has an obvious inheritance relationship with the Book of Rites and Music and the Preface to Mao's Poems, but the difference between the two is obvious. The latter's starting point lies in politics and religion, while Zhong Rong is revealing the essence of poetry, that is, poetry is the outpouring of human vitality, and the essence of poetry is the essence of life. It is precisely because Zhong Rong regards poetry as a form of expression of human spiritual activity, as a phenomenon of life, so it can "illuminate the three talents of the candle, and the beauty of all things", so as not only to let people talk to nature, but also to realize the communication between man and supernatural life, which is the difference between the two.

Zhong Rong's theory of "bard temperament" is on the one hand connected with traditional Confucian poetry, and at the same time reflects the latest developments in creative practice and literary theory. Zhong Rong believes that the inspiration of the poet's emotions depends on the inspiration of objective external objects; and regarding the meaning of objective external objects, Zhong Rong believes that one refers to natural search and the other refers to social personnel. Traditional Confucian poetry theory of speech, the literature into the political and religious track, writing poetry requires "a country's affairs, the basis of one person", "the world's affairs, the shape of the four directions". Zhong Rong, on the other hand, inherited Lu Ji's "affection" theory, and associated his personal life with poetry creation, which broke through the barriers of Confucianism, greatly expanded the leading city of poetry to express social life, and enriched and developed the tradition of poetry creation.

Zhong Rong's theory of "taste" fundamentally links "taste" with poetic beauty, thus contributing to the creation of poetry and the development of theory. In the "Preface to Poetry", the five words and four words are compared, and the conclusion obtained is very clear: "The five words are the essence of the words, and they are the taste of the works, so the clouds will be in the customs." And the reason why the five-word poem has a taste, Zhong Rong pointed out: "Don't you refer to the shape of things, poor love writing, the most detailed one!" These three sentences are actually theoretical summaries of the aesthetic characteristics of the five-word poem. According to Zhong Rong's point of view, this aesthetic feature of Wuyan poetry is the basic condition for the beauty of Wuyan poetry; in other words, the concrete vivid and profound artistic image created from the sense of harmonious combination of content and form is the source of taste in the appreciation of Wuyan poetry. From the perspective of artistic expression, Zhong Rong also believes that the taste of poetry is closely related to the use of xing, comparison and fu techniques. He advocated the use of "Fu Bi Xing" as an artistic method rather than a rhetorical technique, emphasizing the image thinking characteristics of poetry; in "Bi Xing", Zhong Rong attached more importance to "Xing", interpreted "Xing" with "the text has been exhausted and the meaning is more than enough", and paid more attention to the sense of "Xing"; "Hongsi Three Meanings, Use It As Appropriate", advocating the combination of the three methods, in order to use the three methods in a larger thinking space, to achieve the purpose of "pointing to things and writing things poorly".

In the long-term feudal society, the painful life of the people who were suppressed and damaged was the soil that bred literature, and Zhong Rong noticed this fact and advocated reflecting this fact according to the characteristics of lyric poetry, so that readers with the same or similar encounters were infected by the complex and achieved psychological balance, so Zhong Rong paid special attention to the tradition of "poetry can complain".