A Discussion On The Antithetic Verse By Wang Zao

Content:During the South Song Dynasty, the antithetic verse resumed booming, while the ancient style prose declined comparatively. It's Wang Zao, with his successfully writing of antithetic verse, who played the role key leading to the booming. In the early years of the South Song Dynasty, an eventful period, Wang Zao, who was a senior official in charge of drafting the imperial mandates, drew up all of the most important mandates. Occasionally, something inappropriate in his works caused him to face severe satirization and influenced the people's impartial appraisal to him. As a whole, his works, be full of honorable spirit, seemed magnificient and appropriate with a elaborate metre but easy to understand, a strong emotion which could touch readers' in the heart deeply. In the opinion of Wu Cheng, a writer with a good command of the ancient style prose in the Yuan Dynasty, Wang Zao mastered a comprehensive expression of the artistic technique of antithetic verse. In his writings, there is not only a style of Ou and Su's ignorance of the standard, such as the long antitheses like the prose which makes the readers feel so free,but also a style of Wang Anshi's refinement and elegance such as comforming strictly to the rule and avoiding even a improper word painstakingly. The two different styles had never been separated from each other, but blend into a new style of his own. With a positive view on literature, Wang Zao emphasised on the importance of writting technique, and thought that both the artistic form and ideological content were essential, even though it's overshadowed by the Confucian school of idealist philosophy during the Song Dynasty. At the same time, Wang Zao opposed that the writings only keep an eye on the personal gain and lose, hence his writings got rid of chatting nonsense, hiking among the scenery of hills and waters, chanting personal taste, but payed close attention to the current events. Consequently all of the malpractice of voidness and vulgarness were cast away from his writings. Because the official statement is the central issue in the social life, Wang Zao's official mandates written in antithetic verse were highly praised as A Help To Resurgence, that promoted the historic position of the antithetic verse and influenced the later writers profoundly. Afterwards, the writing technique of the antithetic verse of other writers was affected more or less by Wang Zao and made no more breakthrough till the end of the South Song Dynasty.