On The Contributions Of Sancao To The Styles Of Ancient Chinese Poetry

On the contributions of Cao Cao,Cao Pi and Cao Zhi to the Styles of Ancient Chinese Poetry Ancient Chinese poetry, one of the miracles in China's literary history, had experienced along-time development. As an important dimension of poetry, poetic styles and forms ranging from two-character-regular verses to more-than-ten-character ones, had been explored conscientiously by ancient authors. Ancient poetry came to its highlight of maturity during the prosperous Tang Dynasty, with five-character-regular verse and seven-character-regular verse being the main poetic forms. The two forms of poetry were very popular with the poets of Tang Dynasty, and strikingly enough, the former reached its stage of maturity through the efforts of Cao Zhi, while the latter came to its shape via Cao Pi. More importantly, Cao Cao, one of the Three Cao-Surnamed poets and father of Cao Zhi and Cao Pi, created the poetic miracle of developing the four-character-regular verse into its glorious peak. While the three poets might be adept at different poetic forms, they were not restricted to the composition of one particular form. This thesis aims at expounding the contributions of the three poets to ancient Chinese poetic forms and styles, and meanwhile analyzing the possible reasons for their contributions respectively from the objective and subjective aspects. The body of the thesis is divided into three parts.Part oneFirst, the evolution of the poetic styles prior to the Wei Dynasty is reviewed: Before the three Cao-Surnamed poets, there existed more than one poetic styles, among which, the four-character-regular verse already started to decline and meanwhile the five-and-seven-character-regular verse was yet to earn their literary positions, and the review also intends to pave the way for the discuss, in the next part , of the important roles played by the three poets in making five-and-seven-character-regular verses the main styles of ancient Chinese poetry. Second, a brief introduction is made about the life stories and poetry composing, focusing on their poetic content and characteristics, in order to achieve an overview of the three poets'creative efforts, and as a contrast, matters of poetic style is discussed only briefly, which is the main topic of the next part.Part two The contributions of the three Cao-surnamed poets to poetic styles are discussed respectively. First, Cao Cao's four-character poems feature simple wordings, lively rhythms, frank attitude, abundance in emotions, realism, and heroic pathos and describe his ambition as a politician, his bearing as a militarist and his feelings as a poet. As regards the matter of style, he is able to break the limitations of traditional four-character-regular verses and make his own creative contribution by employing his unique styles. Accounting for about one-third of all his poems, Cao Cao's five-character poems mainly recount the current affairs of his time, with a vague taste of lyricism, but that's enough to push forwards the development of this form of poetry. Cao Cao's character-irregular (with each line containing different number of Chinese characters) poems also show a unique style in terms of their experimental nature and good structures. Second, Cao Pi's contribution is also manifold. He composed the first truly mature seven-character poem, which forms his greatest contribution to poetic styles and thus has a far-reaching influence. Meanwhile, he is also fruitful in terms of reforming four-character-regular verse; his five-character-regular poetry, with a totality of more than twenty, demonstrates a visible artistic improvement on that of Cao Cao's; as one of the representatives of the six-character poets, he composed the standard poems of this type; and regarding his character-irregular poetry, he created some long pieces, which form a breakthrough of the ancient Yuefu style and have a big influence on the long poems of Gexing style that followed. Third, Cao Zhi also has his share of contributions to poetic styles. He, being the best author in all aspects of five-character poetry writing, helped establish the literary position of this kind of poem; his four-character poems are also valuable although in general they are not so good as those composed by Cao Cao; as one of the representatives of six-character poets, his composition of this sort embodies a high artistic level; his seven-character poems are of high readability although artistically weaker as compared with Cao Pi's; and among his character-irregular poems, there are a lot of good pieces which have been favorably reviewed. In short, the father and two sons of the Cao family made remarkable explorations of a variety of poetic styles, contributed their shares in the development of ancient poetic styles, and demonstrated the spirit of creativity.Part threeAn analysis is made of the possible reasons why the three poets could spontaneously probe into the matter of poetic styles and remarkably push the development of poetic style through their own efforts. And the discussion is conducted from two aspects. First, the context of time and literature in the poets'time: they lived in the interim of one dynasty replacing another when freer thinking was allowed, literary spontaneity awoke and sense of creativity was enhanced; the three poets, considering their political identity and well-grounded literary talent, could be confident enough to take the initiative in poetic experimentation; despite their differences in personality and temperament, the three poets all showed passions for and thought highly of literature and consequently were actively and creatively involved in poetry composition; with their lead, accomplished poets and good poems sprang up in the Jian An period of Wei Dynasty, which in turn encouraged the three poets'activeness in poetry writing. Second, the influence of folk songs and ballads: as fresh nutrition for poetry, folk songs, especially the five-character and seven-character ballads, have a great influence over the three poets'creation. Third, the demand in the development of poetic style per se: poetic styles are in a process of constant evolution and development, and it is inevitable that five-character and seven-character verses became the main poetic style, so the achievements by the three poets in poetic styles could be attributed to the inevitability of the evolution of poetic styles as well as their conscientious efforts.