The Art of Chinese Poetry (Routledge Library Editions: Chinese Literature and Arts)

This book, first published in 1962, is a majestic survey of the whole structure of Chinese poetry. It is a critical introduction to the field as well as an exposition of Chinese views on the nature of poetry. It discusses the Chinese language as a poetic medium from various angles – visual, semantic, auditory, grammatical and conceptual. It also describes the bases of Chinese versification and the major verse forms, and offers interpretations of various schools of traditional Chinese criticisms of poetry. The author suggests a synthesis among the different schools and evolves a view of poetry from which critical standards for Chinese poetry can be derived. In applying these standards, he attempts a further synthesis – one between this mainly traditional Chinese view of poetry and the modern Western method of verbal analysis. Imagery, symbolism, allusions and other features of Chinese poetry are analysed critically.