Dian Lun Wen is the first literary monograph in the history of China's literary criticism, written by Cao Pi (Wei Wendi). Dian Lun is a collection of political, social, moral and cultural essays written by Wei Shizi in the late Jian 'an period. The whole book consists of many articles. Thesis is one of them.

Essays on Canon is one of the twenty articles written by Cao Pi, which is written in the form of "Zi" book and is a collection of Cao Pi's essays on a series of state affairs. But it's a pity that most of these twenty articles have been split up to now, leaving only fragmentary chapters. Fortunately, the paper was selected by Xiao Tong in the Southern Dynasties into Selected Works of Zhaoming, and it was completely preserved.

The Influence of Dian Lun Wen

Dian Lun Wen is a very important literary theory work, which is of epoch-making significance in the history of China's literary theory criticism, because there was no well-written literary theory monograph before it. Its appearance marks that China's ancient literary theory began to enter the conscious period.

Essays on Canon starts with criticizing "belittling scholars" and emphasizes "judging others", and analyzes the creative personality and style of the seven sons of Jian 'an. On this basis, it puts forward the literary values of "four topics and eight styles" and "the great cause of governing the country is an immortal event" and the writer's theory of "literature is based on qi".

In Dian Lun Wen, Cao Pi formally put forward the idea of genre classification and their respective characteristics for the first time. While analyzing the writer's talent and personality, Cao Pi put forward the stylistic theory of "four-body and eight-body".

Refer to the above content: Baidu Encyclopedia-Classical Papers