Study On Shanghai’s Old Song In The Perspective Of Modern Chinese Rhythmic Poetry

Chinese poetry combines with dance, song and music from its birth.The Book of Songs (from Spring and Autumn Period), folk songs in Han,Wei, Jin and the Six Dynasty, poems in Tang and Song Dynasty, andtraditional operas in Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasty are perfect examplesof the combination. In the present times some beautiful lyrics, such as LuoDayou and Cui Jian’s works, are selected as poetic texts into teachingmaterials of literature history. While, Shanghai’s Old Song, once exerted agreat influence and still lingering in our ears now, hasn’t aroused enoughconcern in academic circles.In the perspective of modern Chinese rhythmic poetry, this paperselects some poetic lyrics from Shanghai’s Old Song. On the one hand, itdirectly contacts the text to summarize the main feature of Shanghai’s OldSong; on the other hand, it reveals the hidden character of the times andthe implied emotion of the people.This paper is divided into four parts, namely theme and subject,figure and image, language and rhetoric, rhythm and phonology. In the first part it discusses how Shanghai’s Old Song expresses spirits of thepeople at the time by analyzing the following themes: love and marriage,patriotism and rescue, city life, family and friendship. In the second part itexplores the traditional and modern elements of the figure and image inShanghai’s Old Song. In the third part it summarized the variety of thelanguage and rhetoric. In the fourth part it analyzes features of rhythm andphonology in order to reveal the musical elements of Shanghai’s OldSong.In conclusion, there is not only the musical beauty of “song” inShanghai’s Old Song, but also literary connotation of “poetry”. Mostimportantly, it represents the hallmarks of an era which awakes thememory of a whole city.