The six basic elements were drawn from The Book of Songs by scholars of the

Han Dynasty to promote the state's governance, social enlightenment, and

education. The six are: feng (ballad), which offers an insight into the influence

of a sage's thinking on ordinary folk customs; fu (narrative), which directly

states the goodness or evilness of court politics; bi (analogy), which criticizes

mildly the inadequacies of court politics by comparing one thing with another;

xing (association), which extols a virtue by making an indirect reference to

some other laudable thing; ya (court hymn), which shows the proper way of

acquitting oneself as a norm for posterity to follow; and song (eulogy), which

praises and promotes virtue. All the six elements were originally used by

Confucian scholars to expound on the creative techniques in The Book of Songs.

Later, they were used to emphasize creative styles of all works of poetry. They

also served as essential principles of literary criticism.