Some Japanese scholars once asserted that Chinese literary theory “declined in the Tang, Song, Jin, and Yuan dynasties”. This view doesn’t agree with historical facts. In fact, Chinese literary theory didn’t “decline” but “upheave” till the Tang, Song, Jin, and Yuan dynasties. The Tang Dynasty made its own contributions to Chinese poetics and literary theory. Further deepening the results of the “formal movement” in the Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties, it contributed “the view of antithesis”, promoting the establishment of fivecharacter and sevencharacter metrical poems, and the view of “poetic realm”, marking the rise of one of the primary theoretical bases of Chinese “poetic and literary criticism”. In the late Tang Dynasty, Sikong Tu offered the views of “effect beyond rhymes” and “aim beyond taste”, which made profound influence in later days. Up till the Song Dynasty, a real great properity and upheaval occurred in the world of poetic and literary criticism. Varieties of critical works, such poetic review, cipoetry review, and literary review appeared one after another, starting an unprecedented flourishing period of Chinese literature. Till the Ming and Qing Dynasties, “Chinese poetic and literary criticism” had been wellestablished as a field of humanistic study.

ancient Chinese literary theory; literary theory in the Tang Dynasty; literary theory in the Song Dynasty; literary theory in the Jin Dynasty; literary theory in the Yuan Dynasty