New Form Symbols of Poetic Metrical Rules

Author: Shi Wende
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-01-01
Features: Poetry and lyrics are the jade of Chinese literature and one of the symbols of Chinese culture. With the evolution of history, Chinese poetry and lyrics have a vast and diverse content, rich and profound meaning. Countless works of poetry and lyrics have been created throughout Chinese history, with renowned masters emerging one after another. Before the Tang Dynasty, only classical poetry originated from the Shang and Zhou dynasties existed. It was during the Tang Dynasty that regulated verse (jintishu) began to take shape, with its meter and rhyme rules refined. Building upon the foundation of poetic meter, the rules of lyrics became even more intricate. The poetry of the Tang Dynasty and the lyrics of the Song Dynasty not only reached the pinnacle of content but also became the model for meter and rhyme in poetry and lyrics. This book briefly explains the types and elements of poetry and lyrics, and elaborates in detail on the basic and variant forms of meter and rhyme, providing a reference for readers when writing poetry and composing lyrics. It should be noted that writing poetry and lyrics requires many conditions: cultivation in traditional Chinese culture, a theoretical foundation in literature, an understanding of society, human affairs, and historical events, personal experiences, and skills in language and writing, among others. Mastery of meter and rhyme is just one of them. This book primarily discusses the meter and rhyme of Chinese poetry and lyrics, with a focus on the formal description of meter and rhyme. The author employs a successful formal symbolic theory, systematically and essentially portraying the intrinsic formal laws of poetry and lyrics. This book is a unique work on the theory of meter and rhyme in classical Chinese poetry and lyrics, as well as a popular guide for readers to write poetry and compose lyrics according to meter and rhyme. To facilitate the memorization of meter and rhyme, the author, following Wang Li's Poetic Meter of Chinese Language, adopts a newly created formal symbolic system to describe meter and rhyme. The author possesses profound philosophical knowledge. He began studying the meter and rhyme of poetry and lyrics in 1972 and established this formal symbolic system, inspired by his philosophical understanding of meter and rhyme. Over the past 27 years, he has continuously refined his ideas and formalized various types of meter and rhyme. This book has a solid academic foundation, and the new formal symbolic system systematically reveals the essence of meter and rhyme, serving as a learning and reference resource for researchers and enthusiasts of meter and rhyme. At the same time, the author provides a step-by-step introduction to the basic knowledge of meter and rhyme, supplemented by numerous examples of poetry and lyrics when explaining the formal symbols. The explanations are clear and easy to understand, making it suitable for beginners in writing poetry and composing lyrics. The examples of poetry and lyrics used in the book are mostly selected from renowned Tang and Song masterpieces. While learning to write poetry and lyrics according to meter and rhyme, readers can also enhance their appreciation of the art of poetry and lyrics. At the end of the book, there are appendices on the essentials of poetic rhyme, lyrical rhyme, and an index of lyrical forms, for practical use.