"bai Changqing Set" Four New Taxonomy

In the year of815, Bai Juyi had divided his poems into four types: irony poems,leisure poems, sentiment poems and miscellaneous rhythm poems. This is the firsttime that the method of “Quartering Classification” has appeared. In824, the Bai Juyi’Changqing Collection edited by Yuan Zhen has used the same classification.Classification of the poems written by Bai Juyi has an important significance becauseit can not only reflect literary theory of Bai Juyi’s earlier life, but also help readers tounderstand of his poems.Now, the popular view on the “Quartering Classification” considers that thismethod is not a scientific one. Firstly, it has not a uniform standard becausemiscellaneous rhythm poems are divided by genres, and the others are divided bycontents. In addition, some poems could not be divided suitably and definitions of thefour types of poems are vague. Finally, Bai Juyi had abandoned this method in thelater collections of his poems.As to the questions above, I have analyzed more than one thousand poems in BaiJuyi’ Changqing Collection of Poems in order to interpret the poems being questionedone by one. On the basis of my interpretation, I will try to carry out new explorationabout mechanism, applicability and significance of the “Quartering Classification”.