Han poetry refers to those types or styles of poetry particularly associated with the Han Dynasty era of China. This poetry reflects one of the poetry world's more important flowerings, as well as being a special period in Classical Chinese poetry, particularly in regard to the development of the quasipoetic fu;[1] the activities of the Music Bureau in connection with the collection of popular ballads and the resultant development of what would eventually become known as the Yuefu, or as the rhapsodic formal style;[2] and, finally, towards the very end of the Han Dynasty, the development of a new style of shi poetry.[3]
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An important poetic legacy received by Han Dynasty poets was the Shijing, typified by its "classic" four-character line verse. The influences of the Shijing verses during the Han era were directed towards what would later be confirmed as contributing to important aspects of Classical Chinese poetry, such as the direct voice of immediate experience which provides a window into a person's soul.[4] Another important legacy received by the Han poets was that of the Chu Ci with its verse of varying line lengths. Furthermore, there was a received tradition of oral folk ballads.
One of the major forms of literature during the Han Dynasty was the fu, a kind of eclectic grab bag of prose and verse, not easy to classify in English as being either poetry or prose. In Chinese, the fu is classified as wen rather than shi, however these terms do not correspond to English categories of prose and verse (one of the differences in the traditional Chinese categorization being that shi was sung or chanted, whereas the fu was not, at least according to the Hanshu), the credibility of this being enhanced by the fact that one of the compilers of the Hanshu (also known as Book of Han or History of the Former Han Dynasty) was Ban Gu, who was himself a practioner of the fu style.[5] The Han fu derived from the Chuci,[6] which was traditionally considered to be the work of Qu Yuan, who was a wanderer through the countryside and villages of the Kingdom of Chu, after his exile from court. In this context the "Li Sao" is particularly relevant. The Han fu of the second and first centuries BCE were intimately associated with the courts of the emperor and his princes.[7] In other words, they were refined literary products, ornate, polished, and with an elite vocabulary; and, often the subject matter include topics such as life in the palaces of the Han capital cities. The development of the fu form of literature during the Han Dynasty shows a movement toward later more personal poetry and the poems of reclusion, typical for example, of Tao Yuanming, the Six Dynasties poet.[8] The famous Han Dynasty astronomer, mathematician, inventor, geographer, cartographer, artist, poet, statesman, and literary scholar Zhang Heng (78–139 CE) wrote a fu about his own, personal experience (real or imagined) of getting out of the city and its politics and getting back to the country and nature.[9]
An important aspect of Han poetry involves the folk ballad tradition. The influence of these can be seen in the Nineteen Old Poems and the Music Bureau yuefu.
One of the stylistically most important developments of Han poetry can be found in the Nineteen Old Poems collection.
Another important aspect of Han poetry involved the institution known as the Music Bureau, or, in Chinese, Yuefu. This is contrast with the "literary yuefu", which are written in the general style of Music Bureau's collection of Yuefu, or derived from particular pieces thereof.
An important genre developed out of the models of the Music Bureau poetry.
The final regnal era of Han was called Jian'an. At this period the political structure of Han was breaking down, while new developments in poetry were arising. This Jian'an poetry style continued into the Three Kingdoms era.