Starting from criticizing the bad habit of "scholars despise each other", Dianlun Paper points out that "literature is not unified and rarely prepared", and requires people to comment on articles with the attitude of "judging themselves and others" and put forward different requirements for different styles.
He believes that "the recitation should be elegant, the book should be rational, the topic should be realistic, and the poem should be beautiful", and at the same time puts forward the theory of "literary spirit", which holds that "literary spirit is the mainstay, and the gas is clear and turbid." And use this to measure the pros and cons of writers. Dian Lun Thesis also discusses the relationship between articles and politics, holding that articles are "a great cause of governing the country and an immortal event", and put articles in the position of paying equal attention to political achievements and contributions.
Express meaning
Lu Xun said: "An era of Cao Pi can be said to be an era of literary consciousness, or, in modern terms, a school of art for the sake of art." (Lu Xun: the relationship between Wei and Jin demeanor and articles, medicine and wine) Then, Dian Lun Wen can be said to be a theoretical masterpiece of conscious literary criticism in the era of literary consciousness. Prior to this, China's ancient literary theory was still in the unconscious embryonic stage. Most of the literary theories of the pre-Qin philosophers were written.
The papers of scholars in the post-Han dynasty have never been divorced from academics. Among them, literary criticism in the form of individual prefaces and praises only discusses the works of a specific writer and is limited to an article and a book. It was not until the publication of Thesis that it became the first monograph on literary theory from a macro perspective in the history of China's literary criticism.
It shocked the stale ideas that ruled the literary world at the end of Han Dynasty. Summarized the new characteristics and experience of Jian 'an literature; Create a precedent for understanding literary criticism in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties.