Book of Songs: A Critical Selection

Author: Yang Zhishui
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2001-01-01
Features: When we talk about "the Three Hundred Poems" today, we usually regard it as "pure literature," but that wasn't the case back then. The concepts of literature, as well as bureaucracy, scholars, and the common folk, had not yet emerged. In the Analects of Confucius, the "Advanced" chapter mentions the four branches of learning in Confucius's school: riding and archery, speech and rhetoric, governance and administration, and literature. The term "literature" here includes the "Poetry," as well as the "Book of Documents" and the "Book of Changes," roughly referring to the classical texts and literature circulated at the time. The "Poetry" was not only beautiful in its wording but also beautiful in its melody, making it both a literary classic and a form of "musical language," a means of "musical instruction," which people of the time recited and learned.