Front. Lit. Stud. China 2010, 4(3): 442–461 DOI 10.1007/s11702-010-0107-5
RESEARCH ARTICLE
XUE Tianwei, WANG Quan
An Explanation of Gexing
Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag 2010
Abstract Gexing 歌行 is a historical and robust prosodic style that flourished (not originated) in the Tang dynasty. Since ancient times, the understanding of the prosody of gexing has remained in debate, which focuses on the relationship between gexing and yuefu 乐府 (collection of ballad songs of the music bureau). The points-of-view held by all sides can be summarized as a "grand gexing" perspective (defining gexing in a broad sense) and four major "small gexing" perspectives (defining gexing in a narrow sense). The former is namely what Hu Yinglin 胡 应 麟 from Ming dynasty said, "gexing is a general term for seven-character ancient poems." The first "small gexing" perspective distinguishes gexing from guti yuefu 古体乐府 (tradition yuefu); the second distinguishes it from xinti yuefu 新 体 乐 府 (new yuefu poems with non-conventional themes); the third takes "the lyric title" as the requisite condition of gexing; and the fourth perspective adopts the criterion of "metricality" in distinguishing gexing from ancient poems. The "grand gexing" perspective is the only one that is able to reveal the core prosodic features of gexing and give specification to the intension and extension of gexing as a prosodic style. Keywords gexing, prosody, grand gexing, seven-character ancient poems
Received January 25, 2010 XUE Tianwei ( ) College of Humanities, Xinjiang Normal University, Urumuqi 830054, China E-mail: xuetianwei@sina.com WANG Quan International School, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing 100029, China E-mail: wangquan77@gmail.com
An Explanation of Gexing
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The "Grand Gexing" Perspective and "Small Gexing" Perspective

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