The Comments on Xunzi' Poetics

Xunzi systematically summarized all the Confucian Scchools during the Pre-Qin period and constructed a complete poetic theory of his own.He regulated the connotation of the conception that poems revealed the aspiration,got rid of the emotional factors and introduced the Confucian search for ideal personality into the theory, which served as a link between the development of poetic theory in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Confician poetic theory in the period of Han Dynasty.He did not only raise the status of the Book of Songs,but also filled it with rites.He thought that learning the Book of Songs was to understand and practise it.The objective of his quotations from the Book of Songs was mainly to serve his own rite theory.So he was the typical Conficiaan representative to politicize the Book of Songs.