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Classic Of Poetry




The work is one of the Five Classics , canonized by the Han Dynasty , whose scholars framed the 305 poems as having been edited by Confucius from a total corpus of some three-thousand poems. The 305 poems had to be reconstructed from memory by classicists since the previous Qin Dynasty had Burned The Poems Along With Other Classical Texts . (There are, in fact, a total of 308 poem titles that were reconstructed, but the remaining three poems only have titles without any extant text).

The poems are written in four character lines. The airs are in the style of Folk Song s, although the extent to which they are real Folk Song s or literary imitations is debated. The odes deal with matters of court and Historical subjects, while the hymns blend History , Myth and Religious material.

Commentators have also given the ''Book of Songs'' a second tripartite division based on their use of literary figures and devices, into ''fu'', ''bi'' and ''xing'' poems. Roughly, ''fu'' poems are those with a straightforward narrative content; ''bi'' are those with explicit comparisons; while ''xing'' are based on implied comparisons.


TRANSLATIONS

  • ''The Book of Odes'', in ''The Sacred Books of China'', translated by James Legge , 1879

  • ''The Book of Songs'', translated by Arthur Waley , edited with additional translations by Joseph R. Allen , New York: Grove Press, 1996.

  • ''ShiJing'', translated by YunZhong Xu , edited by ShengZhang Jiang, Hunan, China: Hu Nan Chu Ban She, 1993.

  • ''The Shi King: The Old "Poetry Classic" of the New York: Paragon Book, 1969.

  • ''The Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius'', translated by Ezra Pound , Cambridge: Harvard U Press, 1954.

  • ''The Book of Odes'', translated by Bernhard Karlgren , Stockholm: The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950.



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