People and things both exist in form and content , with content representing their essence and form representing their appearance . Confucian scholars often used “form and content” to describe the display and the substance of rites. The external “form” must be based on the internal “content” because form pursued in isolation from content wil…

The expression, which comes from The Analects, means only recording the ideas of ancient scholars without writing one’s own views. It represents the Confucian (551-479 BC) attitude towards the views of ancient scholars: by recording them, one showed respect for such views and aimed to pass them down. But one could also express one’s own views in t…

The term refers to the following six criteria on literary appreciation and criticism which are also six key elements in writing: structural layout of writing, choice of words to construct sentences, acceptance and innovation in the style of earlier writers, inheriting and transforming traditional ways of expression, citing examples to support an arg…

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