Tang poetry

Tang poetry (traditional Chinese: 唐詩; simplified Chinese: 唐诗; pinyin: Táng shī) refers to poetry written in or around the time of or in the characteristic style of China's Tang dynasty, (June 18, 618 - June 4, 907, including the 690-705 reign of Wu Zetian) and/or follows a certain style, often considered as the Golden Age of Chinese poetry. The Quantangshi includes over 48,900 poems written by over 2,200 authors. During the Tang dynasty, poetry continued to be an important part of social life at all levels of society. Scholars were required to master poetry for the civil service exams, but the art was theoretically available to everyone. This led to a large record of poetry and poets, a partial record of which survives today. Two of the most famous poets of the period were Li Bai and Du Fu. Tang poetry has had an ongoing influence on world literature and modern and quasi-modern poetry.

The periodization scheme employed in this article is the one detailed by the Ming dynasty scholar Gao Ping (1350-1423) in the preface to his work Tangshi Pinhui, which has enjoyed broad acceptance since his time. This system, which unambiguously treats poetry composed during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong (the "High Tang" period) as being superior in quality to what came before and after, is subjective and evaluative, and often does not reflect the realities of literary history.

The representative form of poetry composed during the Tang dynasty is the shi. This contrasts to poetry composed in the earlier Han dynasty and later Song and Yuan dynasties, which are characterized by fu, ci and qu forms, respectively. However, the fu continued to be composed during the Tang dynasty, which also saw the beginnings of the rise of the ci form.

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