A Study Of Folk Ballads In The Han Dynasty

Folk ballads have existed since ancient times,originated in the pre-Qin Dynasty and flourished in the Han Dynasty.The soil of the Han dynasty gave birth to unique folk ballads,and the ballads reflected the social landscape of the Han Dynasty from many aspects,covering politics,economic development,agricultural production,social customs,ideology and culture,war disasters and many other aspects of the Han Dynasty.The ballads sung by the people of Han Dynasty were recorded in historical classics and passed down to the present day,providing valuable materials for later generations to study ballad literature and research the history of Han Dynasty.Among the extant folk ballads of the Han Dynasty,political ballads are the bulk,including political praise and satirical ballads and political prophecy ballads.The political praise and satirical ballads include ballads praising the virtues and achievements of officials,as well as ballads exposing and satirizing the darkness of the officialdom,the fraudulent selection of officials,and the misalignment of good and evil.The Han Dynasty provided the environment and ideological basis for the prosperity of prophetic ballads,whose contents can be divided into three categories: predictions of trends in regime change,predictions of the fate of important figures,and predictions of the outcome of major military rebellions.The folk ballads of the Han Dynasty had important political functions,as they were not only a way for the people to express their opinions,but also a basis for the ruler to gauge the public sentiment and opinions,and to evaluate the rise and fall of officials,as well as a means for different interest groups to play political games and create public opinion.The reason for the close relationship between folk ballads and politics in the Han Dynasty is closely related to the tradition of "collecting poems and observing the wind" handed down from the pre-Qin Dynasty,the system of selecting officials and the system of evaluating officials implemented in the Han Dynasty.Folk ballads of the Han Dynasty have unique literary characteristics and artistic features.Ballads grow in the folk,belonging to the category of popular literature,it integrates the folk style,folk language,shows the production and labor,life scene,life customs of the Han Dynasty people.Ballads,which are unique in folk culture,have oral,collective,fluid characteristics.The folk ballads of the Han Dynasty were accompanied by their events,and at the same time,they conveyed the distinctive praise and demotion attitudes of the people,reflecting their hearts,feelings,and opinions.Although the system is short,the ballads are rich in rhetoric,using metaphor,contrast,exaggeration,borrowing and other kinds of rhetoric,reflecting the unique artistic expression and infectious power of folk ballads.The quotation of folk ballads from historical texts is not only an inheritance of the pre-Qin tradition of quotation,but also an important contribution to the diversified narratives,artistic forms,and cultural meanings of historical texts,achieving the collision and integration of literati and folk discourses,and elegant and popular cultures.Folk ballads of the Han Dynasty have important ideological and historical values,as they are the voices of the people and the mirror of history.The ballads recorded the historical facts of the Han Dynasty from different aspects,or the folk ballads themselves were "history".There are differences in the ideological tendencies contained in ballads in different periods,and the authors of different historical biographies have different evaluations on the protagonists of the same ballads,which all reflect the changes of social thought and spirit of the Han Dynasty.In addition,the literati historians "introduced ballads into history","used ballads to prove history",and "used ballads to advocate",which supplemented and enriched the historical materials of the Han Dynasty from different dimensions and restored part of the historical truth from the folk perspective.It provides a multidimensional perspective for future generations to understand and study Han Dynasty society.