Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.7, 2014

 

On the Formation of the Style of the Book of Poetry: From the Perspective of Studies of Cultural Stylistics

(Abstract)

 

Li Changji

 

From the perspective of cultural stylistics, the style of the Book of Poetry was developed historically through people’s cultural practice. The “tendency toward lines of equal length,” which departed from daily language in ancient ritual prayers and chants, along with the development of this form in Shang ritual, were the historical and cultural sources of the style of the Book of Poetry. The improvement of ritual music and chanting skills in the Zhou Dynasty is a technical mechanism for the genesis of rhymes and gradual standardization of “four-character lines” in poetic style; the two kinds of “multi-strophe styles” of the Book of poetry are a sign of the synthesis of subculture of refined and popular songs in the construction of poetic form. The course of genesis of the style of the Book of Poetry was concretely unfolded in the writings of literary individuals in refined diction, the rewriting of folk songs in refined language, and the rewriting of existing refined verses; the collective composing mode of the literati’s poetic style in refined phrasing and their pursuit of regular and beautified forms were the fundamental mechanism of the formation and accomplishment of Zhou poetic style. The academic goal of cultural stylistics is, through the comprehensive review of stylistic ecology, stylistic functional studies and stylistic ethology, to expand the single and static stylistic morphology into a multi-dimensional and dynamic stylistic genealogy, disclosing the cultural meanings in the course of genesis of styles in history.