Ming Dynasty, "seven Poets, Poetic Thoughts

Middle and late Ming dynasty (sixteenth century) China wasdominated by an archaist literary movement called Old Phraseology. People from abroad range of social strata welcomed, supported, and participated. While LiMengyang (l473~l529). He Jingming (l483~l52l) and Wang Shizhen (l526~90). LiPanlong(l5l4~70) was their leaders. They called for a return to antiquity rejectingcompletely prose from after the Wastern Han dynasty (206 BC~8AC) and poetry fromlater than the middle Tang (750~800).Old Phraseology advocated the use of models to recapture the intensity andstrength of classical Chinese literature. For prose writing, writings of Qin and Handynasties were deemed the proper model; For poetry. High Tang (eighty century)verse and, secondarily, Han and Wei dynasty (second and third century) verse was theideal. This standard view of Old Phraseology was blamed and ridiculed by lattercritics. But the reasonableness of its thought was ignored. The main purpose in thisarticle is discussing reasonable or unreasonable elements contented in its thought, and,we would lay Old Phraseology in their historyThis article, including seven chapters, can be individed into two parts. The formerpart (chapter l~3) introduces the historical background of old phraseology such as,the central issue of Ming poetics, the Academic (taige) style and imperial examinationsystem, especially, relationship to Yan Yu (a literature critics in the Southern Song).The latter talks about their poetics thought. We would discuss that the purpose ofusing poetry models was to achieve classical poetry's rejuvenation. Their propositionthat poetry forms must be harmonious to its content (feelings) was undoubtedlyreasonable. Meanwhile their defects were inevitable because they couldn't go beyondtheir historical limits.