History of fu poetry

History of fu poetry
Han dynasty literary gathering at the court of Liu Wu, King of Liang
Traditional Chinese	賦
Simplified Chinese	赋
Hanyu Pinyin	Fù
Wade–Giles	Fu
Jyutping	Fu3
Hokkien POJ	Hu
Middle Chinese	PjuC

The History of fu poetry covers the beginnings of the Chinese literary genre of fu. The term fu describes literary works which have certain characteristics of their own. English lacks an equivalent native term (or form). Sometimes called "rhapsodies", sometimes called "rhyme-prose", fu are characterized by qualities of both poetry and prose: both are obligatory. The fu form of literary work is a treatment in a poetic manner, wherein some topic (or topics) of interest, such as an exotic object, a profound feeling, or an encyclopedic subject is described and rhapsodized upon, in exhaustive detail and various angles of view. And, for a piece to be truly considered to be within the fu genre, it must follow the rules of this form, in terms of structure, meter, and so on.

The first known fu in the fully accepted, modern meaning of the term, dates from the later part of the Zhou Dynasty (c. 1046–256 BC), which is also known as the Warring States period (4th or 5th century BC - 221 BC), since the central regime of the Zhou dynasty had weakened and political power devolved to control by various regional hegemons. During the Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD), the fu style developed into one of the Classical Chinese poetry forms. The fu literary-poetic form continued to develop through the Tang Dynasty (618-906 AD), where it even found as great an exponent of this form as the poet Li Bai, although he is less known in modern translation for this than for his shi and yuefu poetry. After this, new forms of poetry and literature continued to arise and spread, and the fu form became less prominent. During the Song dynasty (960 - 1278 AD) the ci form became dominant; and, after Kublai Khan's establishment of the Yuan dynasty in the 13th century, it was the turn of the qu to rule as the poetry style of the times. More recently, the fu form has been the subject of historical study and critical interest.