First of all, it criticizes the bad habit of "belittling scholars" and the ideological tendency of "respecting the past and belittling the present" and "backing the truth", and puts forward the relationship between writer's talent and literary essence. As for the causes of the bad habit of "scholars despise each other", the article holds that one is the writer's "self-awareness" of his own strengths, and the other is the "darkness overrides self-awareness" of his own shortcomings. Second, "literature is not integrated, and there are few good ones." A writer can't be good at writing skills in various styles, and each is often shorter than others because of his appearance.
Secondly, regarding the stylistic theory, it puts forward the theory of four-body and eight-body, and puts forward the different stylistic features of "four-body". The cover is decent and elegant, the book theory is reasonable and the inscription is realistic. Poetry is beautiful. " This is an accurate theoretical summary made by Cao Pi on the characteristics of artistic grasping style. Among them, the phrase "poetry should be beautiful" separates literary works from the tradition of not distinguishing between literature, history and philosophy. This has gone far beyond the value of its simple division of style and has epoch-making theoretical significance. It marks that the "era of literary consciousness" mentioned by Lu Xun has arrived.
Thirdly, Cao Pi put forward the theory of "literature is based on qi" in his "Dian Lun Paper". The article mentions different kinds of qi, such as qi, body qi, clear qi, turbid qi and so on. Then he said: "Prose is dominated by qi, and the turbidity of qi has a body, which cannot be caused by force." Being the "master" means that literary creation, including other works, mainly depends on the "Qi" endowed by the author, and embodies different styles, either as soothing "Qi" or as unrestrained "Yi". Although the concept of "Qi" was not first put forward by Cao Pi, it was Cao Pi who first applied this concept to literary creation and literary theory criticism. The theory of "writing based on qi" had an important influence on the formation of the tradition of "writing based on qi" in China's ancient literary theory and criticism.
In addition, Cao Pi also affirmed the social value theory and social function of literature in "Dian Lun Papers". Prior to this, literature was regarded as "carving a worm, carving a seal", which was an elegant "road". Cao Pi put forward: "Covering articles is a great cause of the country and an immortal event." It fully affirmed its social value theory and social function.
Dian Lun Essay is the first independent literary criticism work in the history of ancient literary criticism in China, and it is a sign that literature has stepped onto the awakening era. (translated by Han Chuantong)