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Attaching importance to literature's sociality, practicality and display of individuals' personalities is an important basic concept of Chinese ancient literature. The Confucian classic Analects of Confucius emphasizes, "Poetry would ripen you; teach you insight, friendliness and forbearance.'1 The general idea is that poetry can be used to inspire emotions, observe the society and nature, make friends and tactfully criticize or satirize injustice. It manifests a deep understanding of poetry's aesthetic functions and social and educational functions. Wang Chong (27-97), a scholar of the Han Dynasty, thought, "Essays useful to people are harmless, and those not useful to people are superfluous." Bai Yuji, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, said, "Essays are written for the sake of the times, and poems are written for the sake of events." Su Shi, a writer of the Song Dynasty, also pointed out that literature should be "created for something" and "target current malpractices." These arguments all emphasize literature's social property of "practical use." Meanwhile, there are many Chinese ancient literary works describing personal life and emotions. Take the Gong'an School and Jingling School of the Ming Dynasty for example, they clearly proposed that poems and essays should "display individuals' personalities in diverse forms." Actually, in literary practice, such works attaching importance to display of individuals' emotions and interests existed extensively in various periods, and spread more widely to a large extent.
Ancient China's unique literary concepts were deeply influenced by Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist doctrines. The Confucian School advocated "cultivating one's moral character, putting one's own house in order, running the country well and letting peace prevail on earth" and "lifting my ruler higher than Yao and Shun and restoring the purity of the people's ways," though hermits like Tao Yuanming still cherished the ideal of "greatly benefiting people in the world." The Taoist School advocated "Tao models itself after nature," freedom and naturalness. The metaphysics of the Wei and Jin dynasties was a developing form of Taoism. Buddhism as a religion, especially the Zen Sect, played an important role in adjusting frustrated ancient scholars' thoughts and mentalities.
The artistic methods of ancient Chinese literature are very abundant, and multiple methods such as blending of feelings and settings, expression of emotions through describing concrete objects, contrast, imagination, symbolization, use of idioms and puns are often used to depict characters, describe environments and express emotions. Chinese ancient literature focuses on "manifestation" instead of "reproduction" of people and things, i.e. the author reached the state of integration of things and himself according to his subjective will by selecting, abstracting and recombining in his mind external people or things.
In terms of literary criticism, Chinese ancient literature developed unique concepts such as air, rhythm, flavor, meaning, spirit, genre, style, texture, pattern and artistic conception, and formed a literary writing and evaluation system different from that of the West. In short, the highest state pursued by Chinese ancient literature is "perception by intuition instead of explanation in words" and "vivid description without one word." Though these expressions sound very mysterious and abstruse, they could be understood and evaluated by ancient Chinese writers very easily.
As the main carrier of writings of Chinese ancient literature, classical Chinese was mainly used for reading and writing and was separated from everyday words and expressions in life over time. Compared with everyday language, classical Chinese is concise, elegant, simple and lively, contributed to Chinese ancient literature's stylistic feature of "conciseness," and played a key role in the formation and development of ancient literature's sense of beauty, skills and realm. In the history of thousands of years, everyday words and expressions changed dramatically, but phrases, sentence patterns and stylistic rules of classical Chinese remained relatively stable, thus ensuring the continuity of China's literary traditions.
Though classical Chinese was Chinese ancient literature's main mode of writing, the factor of vernacular Chinese also emerged. Civil popular literature including novels and dramas mostly adopted language mixing classical Chinese and vernacular Chinese. This state lasted till the late Qing Dynasty. In the literary reform movement in the late Qing Dynasty, language reform was the main focus of the ideological and literary circles then, and the opinion that "I write what I say" gradually received extensive recognition. After the "May 4th" New Culture Movement in the early 20th century, vernacular Chinese became the main written language of Chinese literature, and combination of "language" and "literature" was realized for the first time.
In the concepts and practices of Chinese ancient literature, "poems" and "essays" were superior literary forms. Ancient people's orthodox creations were "poems" and "essays," and novels and dramas were mostly regarded as informal works. This is notably different from Western culture and literature. Under the Western context, ancient Greek tragedies are the most sublime artistic classics. The social and cultural status of ancient Chinese novels and dramas was relatively low, and the authors of many excellent novels and dramas did not leave their names in history. Around the beginning of the 20lh century, China's feudal society declined gradually. Against the backdrop of domestic trouble and foreign invasion, thinkers and writers thought highly of the huge role played by novels and dramas in enlightening people and reforming thoughts - for example, Liang Qichao wrote in On the Relationship Between Novels and the Control of the Masses, "The reform of the novel should come before the reform of the nation's populace." Therefore, the social status of novels and dramas gradually rose, and they became two literary genres comparable to "poems" and "essays."