HISTORY AND STATUS QUO OF STUDIES ON LITERARY STYLES IN ANCIENT CHINA

Literary style studies mainly took the forms of brief discussions scattered in ancient literatures,corpuses and anthologies compiled by ancient people and in some monographs about literary style.In those studies the following issues are worth mentioning,which include classification,specific stylistic features,viewing literature rooted in the five classics,differences between wen(literature works with flowery language and intense sentiment)and bi(literature works that stand out in reasoning and argumentation),differences between classic prose and Pianwen(rhythmical prose),and poems and prose,ci and qu.Stylistic research have not been regarded as significant in the years from 1949 to 1980.But after that,stylistic research,especially researches on ancient China styles has been given greater emphasis on.