Jueju

''Jueju'' (), or Chinese quatrain, is a type of '' jintishi'' ("modern form poetry") that grew popular among Chinese poets in the Tang Dynasty (618–907), although traceable to earlier origins. ''Jueju'' poems are always quatrains; or, more specifically, a matched pair of couplets, with each line consisting of five or seven syllables.

The five-syllable form is called ''wujue'' () and the seven-syllable form ''qijue'' ().

History

The origins of the ''jueju'' style are uncertain. Fränkel states that it arose from the ''yuefu'' form in the fifth or sixth century. This pentasyllabic song form, dominant in the Six Dynasties period, may have carried over into ''shi'' composition and thus created a hybrid of the ''yuefu'' quatrain and ''shi'' quatrain. Indeed, many Tang dynasty ''wujue'' poems were inspired by these ''yuefu'' songs.

In the seventh century the jueju developed into its modern form, as one of the three "modern" verse forms, or ''jintishi'', the other two types of ''jintishi'' being the '' lüshi'' and the '' pailu''.

The ''jueju'' style was very popular during the Tang dynasty. Many authors composing ''jueju'' poems at the time followed the concept of "seeing the big within the small" (), and thus wrote on topics of a grand scale; philosophy, religion, emotions, history, vast landscapes and more.

Authors known to have composed ''jueju'' poems include Du Fu, Du Mu, Li Bai, Li Shangyin, Wang Changling and Wang Wei.

Form

Traditional literary critics considered the ''jueju'' style to be the most difficult form of ''jintishi''. Limited to exactly 20 or 28 characters, writing a ''jueju'' requires the author to make full use of each character to create a successful poem. This proved to encourage authors to use symbolic language to a high degree.

Furthermore, tonal meter in ''jueju'', as with other forms of Chinese poetry, is a complex process. It can be compared to the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables in sonnets. A poet writing a ''jueju'' or similar ''lüshi''-style poem needs to alternate level and oblique tones both between and within lines.

Some of the formal rules of the regulated verse forms were applied in the case of the jueju curtailed verse, these rules as applied to the ''jueju'' include regular line length, use of a single rhyme in even-numbered verses, strict patterning of tonal alternations, use of a major caesura before the last three syllables, optional parallelism and grammaticality of each line as a sentence. Each couplet generally forms a distinct unit, and the third line generally introduces some turn of thought or direction within the poem.Fränkel, 212–214.

Structure

''Jueju'' follows one of the following tonal patterns:
;Type I, Standard

;Type II, Standard

;Type I, Variant

;Type II, Variant

○ is a character with a level tone, while ● is a character with an oblique tone (a rising, departing or entering tone).

Example

This poem is called "Spring Lament" () and was written by Jin Changxu.

This poem concerns a standard figure in this type of poetry, a lonely woman who is despondent over the absence of a husband or lover, probably a soldier who has gone to Liaoxi in present-day Mongolia. She chases away the orioles to stop their singing in the first couplet. The second couplet gives the reason. The bird songs interrupted her sweet morning dream to see her husband in the far away land. The words and phrases tug at her heart.

See also

* Classical Chinese poetry
* Shi (poetry)
* Ci (poetry)
* Fu (poetry)
* Lüshi (poetry)
* Qijue
* "Quiet Night Thought"
* Qu (poetry)
* Regulated verse
* Shichigon-zekku
* ''Three Hundred Tang Poems''

References

Citations

Sources

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External links

"The Whole Collection of Tang Poetry"

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Chinese poetry forms