Classical+Chinese+poetry

=Classical Chinese poetry=
 * Classical Chinese poetry** is that type of poetry that is the traditional Chinese poetry written in Classical Chinese. It is typified by certain traditional forms, or modes, and certain traditional genres. Its existence is documented as early as the publication of the Classic of Poetry, dating from a traditionally, and roughly, estimated time of around BCE 500, in what is now China, but at that time was composed of the state of Zhou and various other independent states, such as Chu. Various combinations of forms and genres exist. Many or most of these were developed by the end of the Tang Dynasty, in CE 907. Use and development of Classical Chinese poetry actively continued up to until the May Fourth Movement, in 1919, and is not totally extinct even today in the Twenty-first Century. During this over two-and-a-half thousand years of more-or-less continuous development, much diversity is displayed –– both between the poetry typical of major historical periods, or, as by the traditional Chinese historical method, by dynastic periods. Major dynastic periods especially important for Classical Chinese poetry include Origins of Chinese poetry, Han poetry, Six Dynasties poetry, Tang poetry, and Song poetry. Another aspect of Classical Chinese poetry worthy of mention is its intense inter-relationship with other forms of Chinese art, such as Chinese painting and Chinese calligraphy. Eventually, Classical Chinese poetry has proven to be of immense influence upon Modern Poetry.

Oral versus written
One important aspect of Classical Chinese poetry is that it was generally designed to be chanted or sung, with or without musical accompaniment. In fact, folk poetry, almost by definition, was orally composed and orally transmitted. This is because the "folk" were for the most part illiterate, as opposed to the scholarly classes who were generally literate; however, even the poems of the scholarly classes were intended to be sung or chanted. The particular characteristic of the Chinese writing system certainly had an important role in Chinese poetry. In fact, one of the factors which enabled a continuous poetic tradition in China for more than two millenia has to do with the fact that Chinese words can be represented by their corresponding Chinese characters semi-independently of their pronunciation (and, in fact, this extends even to their use in classical versions of Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese). The pronunciations of spoken Chinese changed quite a bit over the course of time from the oldest surviving written Chinese poetry, during the period of Old Chinese, through the Middle Chinese period (which included the Tang Dynasty), and up into the Modern Chinese period. During this course of development, Classical Chinese evolved as a distinct literary language, distinct from the spoken vernacular. The tension between a spoken vernacular and a literary form of the language worked both ways, the poetry of literature can be seen to have "various degrees of vernacular overlay" and also the oral folk poetry sometimes were "filled with literary phrases and constructions", perhaps due to the prestige nature of the written language. To what degree has the pictorial element latent in Chinese characters informed Classical Chinese poetry? The etymology of Chinese characters must be considered to be related but distinct from the evolution of the language itself. As is the case with many ancient writing systems, such as the Phoenician alphabet, many of the earliest characters seem to have begun as pictograms, with a picture representing an idea which corresponded with the word for that idea. By the times of Classical Chinese, a complex system of writing had evolved with many characters being composed of combinations of other characters, chosen for similarities of meaning and/or sound. The resulting strong graphical aspect, versus a weaker phonetic element, (at least, say, compared to standard written English), cannot be ignored. However, different translators of Classical Chinese poetry have emphasized these elements to differing degrees. Sinologist and translator A. C. Graham cautions against over-emphasizing this visual effect, which he says can, "...act on the imagination like blobs in the Rorschach test. It is rather difficult to estimate this effect since a habitual reader of Chinese is hardly conscious of it without deliberately analysing his [sic] reactions....Certainly one can give too much weight to the visual aspect of Chinese writing. Poems in China, as elsewhere, are firstly patterns of sound...." However, Graham is in no way suggesting that the Chinese poet is unaware of the background considerations stemming from character construction.

Forms (or modes)
Main article: Classical Chinese poetry forms There are various typical forms or modes in which Classical Chinese poetry was written.

Genres
Main article: Classical Chinese poetry genres Various genres of Classical Chinese poems have been discerned, either by the composing poet or through literary criticism.

Other characteristics
Besides various formal modes and genres, Classical Chinese poetry has various other typical features.

Persona
The use of a poetic persona is often encountered in Classical Chinese poetry, in which the author writes a poem from the viewpoint of some other person or type of person. Often these persona types were quite conventional, such as the lonely wife left behind at home, the junior concubine ignored and sequestered in the imperial harem, or the soldier sent off to fight and die beyond the remote frontier.

Sociopolitical criticism
Many Classical Chinese poems can be read as a commentary upon current events and society. Sometimes these are somewhat disguised through the use of symbolic imagery.

Imagery and symbolism
Certain images and symbolism became quite conventional, and are key to understanding many of the Classical Chinese poems. For example, the falling autumn leaf can refer to personal or dynastic decline.

Exile
Many Classical Chinese poems were written as more-or-less subtle or implied complaints for the treatment of the author by the government. This is in part due to the nature of the imperial examination system as a way of recruiting talented persons into high political office, and the expectations of the talented poet of finding a suitable position within such a society.

Allusions
Many Classical Chinese poems involve allusions or references to previous literature or well-known folk material.

Optional precision
In part due to the possibilities inherent in the Classical Chinese language and in part as an esthetic principle, many Classical Chinese poems are imprecise when it comes to gender, number, case, or other logically-informative elements of speech which tend to be grammatically obligatory or difficult to avoid in various inflected languages, such as certain Indo-European languages.

Reader participation
Many Classical Chinese poems appear simple on the surface, but contain deeper, more profound ideas; but, in order to realize what these are, the reader is expected to meet the poet half-way -- not just to be told something, but to actively think and feel in sympathy with the poet or the poet's persona.

Parallelism
The arrangement of poems into couplets encouraged the use of parallelism: where for two lines of a poem it would be expected that the reader would compare and contrast the meaning of two lines, which would be specifically marked by the poet by using the same parts of speech in each position, or in certain key positions in each line, or else within one line.

Antisthesis
Antisthesis refers to the often latent contradiction between two statements which when sufficiently considered can lead to the understanding of a third, unstated opinion. It often plays a part in relationship to parallelism: the reader has to consider whether what seems to be parallel constructions and ideas really are so.