By Wu Qianwen

The School of Foreign Languages held a lecture entitled The Oral Presentation of Classic Verse and Prose in Liyun B210 at 7:00 p.m. on December 17th. The lecture was given by Zhou Liuxi, professor and doctoral supervisor from the School of Foreign Languages and Literatures of Beijing Normal University.

In the lecture, Professor Zhou pointed out that all languages, including tone languages and non-tone languages, have their prosodic features and the metrical patterns in the classical works of Chinese verse and prose are the manifestation of the prosodic features of the Chinese language. He then introduced the 6 forms of oral presentation of classical verse and prose, i.e., plain reading, reciting, cadenced chanting, intone chanting, incanting, and singing by note. He particularly expounded on the two general ways of chanting and singing, stressing that to chant or sing a poem well, we should understand the background and artistic conception of the poem. In his illustrations, he sang some poems such as Yishui-ge and Suwu Muyang, which exerted great fascination on the audience.

As a seasoned and conscientious scholar, he appealed to the young students present that they should have a global vision and shoulder the historical mission of carrying on traditional Chinese culture.