Group - Fu poetry

Fu (Chinese: "Descriptive poem") is a kind of prose-poem popular in ancient China, especially during the Han Dynasty. During the Han Dynasty, the Chu Ci-type of lyrics evolved into fu. It is a type of prose-poem with introductory, concluding, or other interspersed passages that are in prose, typically in the form of questions and answers. The fu is usually called rhapsody in English, but has also been called "rhyme-prose," "exposition," and sometimes "poetical essay." A Han fu is typically very long, describes a subject exhaustively from every possible angle, and is usually meant to display the poet's rhetorical and lexical skill rather than express personal feeling. Since it is meant to impress and display, the Han fu is termed the "epideictic fu." One of the most well-known Han fu is Sima Xiangru's Tianzi Youlie Fu ( "Rhapsody on the Son of Heaven on a Leisurely Hunt"). The philosopher Yang Xiong, historian Ban Gu, and astronomer Zhang Heng also wrote important rhapsodies during Han. During the Six Dynasties, fu remained a major poetic genre, and together with shi formed the twin generic pillars of Chinese poetry until shi began to dominate in the Tang dynasty.