Abstract:

With reference to the history of Chinese poetry, "Eight Rhymes" are found to be with various classifications and origins. Not taking homophone rhyme as a rhyme pattern, the author of Eight Rhymes creates four new rhyme styles, i.e., assonance rhyme, successiveassonance rhyme, doublecharacter rhyme and doublerhyme rhyme. The latter four are produced according to Chinese phonetic features rather than examples from poetic works, based on which are summarized adjacenthomophone rhyme, modified rhyme and dynamic rhyme. From the "Eight Rhymes" can we see that rhyme styles of Chinese poetry kept developing till the middle Tang Dynasty and were more deeply understood in the theory of poetic rhythm from the Six Dynasties and the poetics after the glorious age of Tang Dynasty than in modern times.

Key words: "Eight Rhymes", Wen Jing Mi Fu Lun, the theory of poetic rhythm