The ancestor of Chu Rhetoric was Qu Yuan.

Qu Yuan (about 340 BC-278 BC), born in Zigui, Danyang, Chu (now Yichang, Hubei Province), was a poet and statesman of Chu during the Warring States period. He is a great patriotic poet in Chinese history, the founder of Chinese Romantic literature, the founder and representative writer of "Chu Rhetoric", opened up the tradition of "Vanilla Beauty", and is known as "the ancestor of Chu Rhetoric". "In 1953, on the occasion of the 2,230th anniversary of Qu Yuan's death, the World Peace Council adopted a resolution identifying Qu Yuan as one of the world's four great cultural figures to be commemorated in that year.

Why Qu Yuan, the "Ancestor of Chu Rhetoric"

Literary Innovations

(1) The Symbolism of "Vanilla Beauty"

Qu Yuan's The symbolism of "Vanilla Beauty" inherits and brings into play the picaresque technique of the Classic of Poetry. Qu Yuan's creations show the liberation of emotion to a considerable extent, thus resulting in a brand-new style of poetry that is full of vitality and powerful infectious force. Due to this need for emotional expression, he could not be satisfied with the plain writing technique, but needed to borrow a lot of mythological material from the Chu region, and used the beautiful fantasy to greatly expand the realm of poetry, showing the magnificent features.

This opened up a new path for the creation of classical Chinese poetry. Later generations of poets with strong personalities and emotions, such as Li Bai and Li He, were greatly inspired by it. It can be said that the genres of ancient Chinese literature that emphasize literary elegance and attention to florid beauty can ultimately be traced back to Qu Yuan.

(2) The Creation of New Poetic Forms--Sao Style and New Poetry Styles

For the works of Ch'u Ch'iu, not only did it have certain ready-made five-word or seven-word lines, but also it created and used a lot of three-word dun rhythms in addition to two-word dun rhythms.

The emergence of the three-character dun rhythm is an opportunity for the four-character poem to be transformed into five or seven characters. Therefore, it can be said that Chu Rhetoric is the earliest poetic work that breaks the four-character stanzas, and includes the embryonic model of five- and seven-character poems in its uneven variety of stanzas, which has given endless inspiration to the descendants.

In addition, Ch'u Ch'i created a new style of poetry. This form of poetry is freer and more varied than that of the Book of Songs, both in syntax and structure, and is therefore more effective in shaping artistic images and expressing complex and intense feelings. In terms of syntax, Chu Shi is mainly in miscellaneous language, breaking away from the traditional four-character syntax. In terms of language description, Chu Rhetoric is good at rendering and describing, and the words are rich and rich, attaching great importance to the beauty of the external form, which created conditions for the creation of fugue literature in the Han Dynasty. Chu rhetoric also highlights the romantic spirituality, which is mainly manifested in the passion and exuberance of feelings, the pursuit of ideals, and the emergence of the image of the lyrical protagonist, the fantasy of imagination, etc., and creates a majestic and magnificent picture through fantasy and myth.

(3) The Romanticism of Chu Rhetoric

Qu Yuan's Romanticism had a profound influence on the later generations of literary creation. In particular, Li Bai, the great romantic poet of the Tang Dynasty in China, consciously studied the positive romanticism of Qu Yuan's creative methods. Li Bai's poetry is also a large number of Luo Zhi myths and legends, historical figures, the sun and the moon and wind and clouds into the poem, which constitutes a picture of magnificent and majestic.