Han poetry
Han poetry is associated with the Han dynasty era of China, 206 BC – 220 AD, including the Wang Mang interregnum. Han poetry is considered a significant period in Classical Chinese poetry due to several important developments. One key aspect was the development of the quasipoetic fu, a distinctive literary form. The activities of the Music Bureau, which collected popular ballads, led to the creation of what would later be known as the yuefu, a rhapsodic poetic style.
Towards the end of the Han dynasty, a new style of shi poetry emerged. As the yuefu evolved into fixed-line forms resembling shi poetry, distinguishing between the two styles became increasingly difficult. Consequently, the classification of certain poems as yuefu or shi is often somewhat arbitrary.
Major works from the Han era include the compilation of the Chuci anthology, which contains some of the oldest and most important poetic verses to be preserved from ancient China, after the Shijing anthology.General background
The ruling family of the Han dynasty was the Liu family, founded by Liu Bang. His career began as a minor official during the chaotic final years of the Qin dynasty. During this period of instability, Liu Bang became an outlaw and rebel, eventually rising to the position of King of Han during the division of the Qin empire. After establishing the Han dynasty, he was posthumously honored as Emperor Gaozu, also known as the Han High Founder or Han Great Ancestor.
Despite Liu Bang's commoner background and general lack of literacy, he held a great regard for literature and learning. His patronage of literature and the arts, as well as his connections with the unique culture of Chu would set a precedent for the rest of the dynasty which he founded. He granted Liu family princes a great deal of autonomy in their local areas, and the development of subsidiary royal courts and patronage of literature and the arts followed.
Brushing characters with ink is archeologically attested to during the Han period, including on silk, hemp paper, and bamboo slips. The bamboo slips were tied together carefully with delicate string cords. However, when these cords deteriorated over time, the slips often became disordered, scrambling the text. While more durable methods such as stamping or marking on clay or engraving on stone were also used, they required fairly elaborate craftsmanship to produce. As a result, much of the poetry from the Han dynasty has not survived in its original form. Instead, most extant works have been preserved through anthologies compiled during the Six Dynasties period.Poetic background
Han dynasty poets inherited a rich poetic legacy, notably influenced by the Shijing and the Chu Ci traditions. There is little or no direct poetic influence from the preceding Qin dynasty, which engaged in a purge of heterodoxy, destroying its imperial library.
The Shijing, characterized by its "classic" four-character line structure, played a crucial role in shaping Han poetry. This verse style emphasized the direct expression of immediate experience, intended to offer a window into the poet’s inner soul. Han state policies promoted Confucian philosophy, which elevated the Shijing as one of the central canonical texts, giving it lasting prominence in Chinese literary and cultural tradition. The Chu Ci introduced innovations such as varied line lengths. Han poets expanded upon this body of work, contributing new material that was later compiled into an edited anthology. Han poets also drew inspiration from orally transmitted folk songs and ballads.
The expansion of the Han empire into new areas introduced new and exotic ideas and objects, which sometimes became subjects in the fu prose-poetry literary form.Han dynasty poets
Some well-known poets from Han times are known; however, many of the poets are anonymous, including the poets behind the Music Bureau collections including the Nineteen Old Songs, as is typical of verses from the folk ballad tradition. Important individual Han era authors of poetry include Zhang Heng and Liu Xiang. Many of the Han poets who wrote in their own personal voice under their own name or pen-name wrote in the fu style, in the sao style, or both. In other cases, poems have been attributed to specific Han dynasty persons, or written in perspective of their persona, but the real author remains unknown. For example, the cases of the poems attributed to Su Wu and Consort Ban are not determined. Other Han poets include Sima Xiangru, Ban Gu, and Mi Heng.Sima Xiangru
was one of the most important poets of the Han dynastic era, writing in both the Chuci and the fu styles.Su Wu
was held captive for 19 years, returning to China in 81 BC: 4 poems collected in the Wen Xuan are only questionably attributed to him. However, at the time, it was not uncustomary to confuse the persona of a poem with the person of the author. There is a story about Su Wu which became a common allusion in Chinese poetry. According to this story, during the beginning of his captivity in the Xiongnu empire Su Wu was treated harshly, to the point it is said of having to eat the lining of his coat for food and to drink snow which he melted for water. Later Su was elevated in status, even it is said given a wife who bore him children. Upon the Han emperor sending an ambassadorial mission toward the territory in which he was being held, the Xiongnu ruler wished to conceal the presence of Su Wu, presumably in order avoid diplomatic complications; but, Su Wu hearing of this tricked the chanyu by claiming that he had sent a message to the emperor by tying it to the leg of a goose, and accordingly, that since his presence was already known to the Chinese delegation that any attempts at concealing his presence would be viewed as unseemly. This is at least part of the origin of the use of the image of a flying goose as a messenger, carrying tied to its foot a letter between two people separated so far seasonally north and south that a migrating goose could be conceived as a possible mode of communication.Ban Jieyu also known as Lady Pan was a concubine to Emperor Cheng of Han and the great-aunt of the poet, historian, and author Ban Gu. A well-known poem in the Wen Xuan is attributed to her. Although most unlikely to actually be by her, it is certainly written as if it could have been written by her or someone in her position. It is an important early example of the secluded palace lady genre of poetry.Ban Gu
was a 1st-century Chinese historian and poet best known for his part in compiling the historical compendium the Book of Han. Ban Gu also wrote a number of fu, which are anthologized in the Wen Xuan.''Chuci''
One of the most important Han era contributions to poetry is the compilation of the Chuci anthology of poetry, which preserves many poems attributed to Qu Yuan and Song Yu from the Warring States period, though about half of the poems seem to have been in fact composed during the Han Dynasty. The meaning of Chuci is something like "The Material of Chu", referring to the ancient Land of Chu. The traditional version of the Chu Ci contains 17 major sections, anthologized with its current contents by Wang Yi, a 2nd-century AD librarian who served under Emperor Shun of Han, who appended his own verses derivative of the Chuci or "sao" style at the end of the collection, under the title of Nine Longings. The poems and pieces of the Chu Ci anthology vary in their formal poetic styles, including varying line metrics, varying use of exclamatory particles, the use or not of titles for individual pieces within a section, and the varying presence of the luan. Other Han period poets besides Wang Yi the librarian who are known or thought to be contributors of poems collected in the Chuci include the poet Wang Bao and the scholar Liu Xiang. Liu An, the Prince of Huainan, and his literary circle were involved with the Chuci material, but the attribution of authorship of any particular poems is uncertain.''Fu''
One of the major forms of literature during the Han dynasty was the fu, a kind of eclectic grab bag of prose and verse, not easy to classify in English as being either poetry or prose. In Chinese, the fu is classified as wen rather than shi, however these terms do not correspond to English categories of prose and verse, the credibility of this being enhanced by the fact that one of the compilers of the Hanshu was Ban Gu, who was himself a practitioner of the fu style. The Han fu derived from the rhetorical expositions of the Intrigues of the Warring States and the Chuci, which was traditionally considered to be the work of Qu Yuan, who was a wanderer through the countryside and villages of the Kingdom of Chu, after his exile from court. In this context the "Li Sao" is particularly relevant. The Han fu of the second and first centuries BCE were intimately associated with the courts of the emperor and his princes. In other words, they were refined literary products, ornate, polished, and with an elite vocabulary; and, often the subject matter includes topics such as life in the palaces of the Han capital cities. The development of the fu form of literature during the Han dynasty shows a movement toward later more personal poetry and the poems of reclusion, typical for example, of Tao Yuanming, the Six Dynasties poet. The famous Han dynasty astronomer, mathematician, inventor, geographer, cartographer, artist, poet, statesman, and literary scholar Zhang Heng wrote a fu about his own, personal experience of getting out of the city and its politics and getting back to the country and nature. The fu form continued to be popular in the centuries following the demise of the Han imperial power.