Chinese folk song

Author: Zhu Ziqing
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-02-01
Features: The prose masterpieces of Mr. Zhu Ziqing (1898-1948) are widely renowned. In fact, his significance as a Chinese literature scholar should not be underestimated. Zhu Ziqing taught at Tsinghua University for a long time and served as the head of its Chinese Department. He was a rigorous scholar with a modest academic style, influencing generations of scholars. Chinese Folk Songs is one of the earlier monographs on Chinese folk literature since the May Fourth Movement. Its original form was Zhu Ziqing’s lecture notes from 1929-1931, later compiled and published as a standalone book by the Writer’s Publishing House in 1957. In this book, the author begins with the naming, origins, and development of folk songs, clarifying the fundamentals, tracing the history of folk song evolution, establishing their classification and structure, and studying their rhetoric. Building on the achievements of his contemporaries and drawing inspiration from certain Western research methods, this book became a pioneering work in the field. The author extensively collected and cited ancient and modern Chinese folk songs, preserving a wealth of original documents. To respect the original work, with the exception of some punctuation marks and obvious printing errors, the book retains certain conventional usages and wording as they appeared in the original text. For those that may not align with current practices, the reader is kindly requested to excuse the discrepancies.