Abstract:Having established the poetic legitimacy of the Incorporation of Colloquial Language into Poetry, literati of the Southern Song Dynasty further integrated it into a linguistic knowledge element of the “Song-style poetry” paradigm. On one hand, they extracted colloquial expressions with textual grounding by drawing on pre-generational classics, histories, Buddhist texts, and poetic works, thereby establishing the poetic notion that colloquial language could enter poetry. On the other hand, poetic theorists elaborated on the poetic principle that colloquialisms required refinement and fusion to achieve innovative expression, incorporating contemporary popular colloquialisms without textual origins into the poetic corpus. These explorations enabled Southern Song literati to widely embrace the practice of incorporating colloquial language into poetry and establish it as a shared poetic knowledge. Building on this, poetic theorists conducted poetic criticism centered on the “use of colloquial language”——exploring poetic writing methods and evaluating poetic works through this practice, while constructing a canonical poetic lineage of “colloquial language users” from DU Fu and the Su School literati to LU You and YANG Wan-li. The dissemination of this criticism not only prompted Southern Song literati to expand the Song poetic connotation of “turning vulgarity into elegance” to include diction and wording but also fostered a prevalent perception among late imperial poets that “Song poetry favors colloquial language”, ultimately elevating the Incorporation of Colloquial Language into Poetry into a knowledge component of Song-style poetry. The integration and convergence of this practice with Song-style poetry provide a knowledge-historical perspective for contemporary scholars to examine the evolution of late imperial poetics.
王子涵. “俗语入诗”批评与南宋诗学的“宋调”知识建构[J]. 《深圳大学学报》(人文社科版), 2026, 43(1): 141-150.
WANG Zi-han. Criticism on the “Incorporation of Colloquial Language into Poetry” and the Intellectual Construction of “Song-Style Poetry” in Southern Song Poetics. , 2026, 43(1): 141-150.