4 i n t roDuC t ion
The dominance of literati themes inevitably led to a marginalization or even an
exclusion of themes deemed irreconcilable with refined literati taste. For instance,
most literati poets sought to sanitize erotic songs by means of allegory or aestheti-
cization. Bawdy themes were thus suppressed, with no small loss to the Chinese
poetic tradition. Hence, there is an absence of much-needed comic relief and the
loss of an opportunity to turn comic ribaldry into an effective means of social and
religious satire, as Geoffrey Chaucer did so admirably in The Canterbury Tales and
John Donne in his metaphysical poetry. Not until the Yuan dynasty, when Chinese
literati had become disenfranchised and had lost their role as defenders of mores
and refined taste, did they begin to embrace bawdy themes in song poems and
drama (zaju), two new genres of popular entertainment on which many of them de-
pended for their livelihood (chap. 16). Besides comic relief, ribaldry allowed Yuan
literati writers to mock their own shattered dreams of officialdom and thereby
dissipate their despair under the oppressive Mongol rule. Indeed, a rambunctious
love poem often belies the heartbreaking poignancy of such self-mockery.
Literati dominance also meant the virtual exclusion of women poets from the
canon. Most major poetic anthologies feature only a tiny number of women poets,
typically the wives, concubines, or courtesans of the imperial family and renowned
literati figures. Relegated to the very end of those anthologies, these women poets
became a mere appendage to the male literati poets. As I have noted, male poets
even appropriated the voices of women. So when women poets sought to express
themselves, they had to find ingenious ways to negotiate around those voices.
Some talented women poets rose to this challenge and successfully created genu-
ine, effective voices of their own. Li Qingzhao (1084–1151), for example, expressed
her personal feelings in ci poems of the greatest lyric intensity and finest artistry,
which earned her a prominent place in a Chinese poetic pantheon otherwise made
up solely of men (C13.4).g e n r e s a nD s u b g e n r e s
On a more abstract plane, the history of Chinese poetry may be understood in
terms of the evolution of its major genres and subgenres, which are extensively
examined in this anthology. There are five major genres in Chinese poetry: shi, sao,
fu, ci, and qu. Each has traditionally been labeled with a particular historical period
in which it achieved dominance: Chu ci, Han fu, Tang shi, Song ci, and Yuan qu.
Such labeling may give the wrong impression of a unilinear development of one
genre supplanting another. In fact, all five genres continued to be used and even
flourished well beyond the dynasties that witnessed their preeminence. With the
exception of sao, they remained influential until the twentieth century.
Each of the five genres has a unique pedigree of subgenres. The pedigree of the
shi subgenre is the most complex of all. Owing to an almost uninterrupted devel-
opment of about two and a half millennia, it had an ever-expanding corpus that
continually needed to be reorganized. Tetrasyllabic shi poetry, represented by the
Book of Poetry, is the oldest shi subgenre. The Book of Poetry is divided by prove-
nance and function into three groups: airs (feng), odes (ya), and hymns (song)