A Study On Gushi Pingxuan

Gushi Pingxuan (literally an annotated anthology of old style poetry,古诗评选),compiled by Wang Fuzhi, a major Chinese philosopher of the late Ming, early Qing dynasties, is an embodiment of Wang’s poetics. It adopts unique patterns for both compilation and annotation of the poems:firstly, the poems collected are classified according to form, and a specific list of five-character jinti (new style poetry,近体) is set apart; secondly, in his annotation, Wang Fuzhi pays attention, not to glossary, but rather to the weighing of the poets’personality, differentiation between elegance and inelegance, and expression of his poetic theory. Taking Shying or the Book of Poems(诗经)as a supreme model, Wang sticks to the old standard shat poetry should be gentle, soft, honest and sincere (wenrou dunhou,温柔敦厚)；accordingly, he makes low comments on the vigorous style(jian,健) of Yu Xin, and laid the blame for the decline of five-character poems on Shen Yue and Du Fu’s shoulders. In contrast, Wang Fuzhi is in high opinion of Cao Pi, while criticizing Wang Can’s swift and fierce style (lingli,凌厉).Wang Fuzhi has built two reference systems for comparison of different poems:one system for contrast of Liang Chen(梁陈)poems and gushi (old style poems,古诗)；the other system for jinti and Liang Chen poems. According to Wang Fuzhi, the five-character jinti poems collected in his anthology, is only "the afterglow of a setting sun" compared to gushi; but when it is put in the aesthetic system of jinti poems, it is truly "the start of an after-rain spring sun". When treating with poetical details, such as sound, content, and structure etc, Wang also offers his unique insight.