Abstract
The terms “parallel prose” and Chinese pianwen 駢文 describe a form of writing that was popular in the Six Dynasties and is well represented in the sixth-century anthology Wenxuan 文選. This ornate and rhythmically precise form of writing bears little resemblance to anything else known in English as “prose,” and should instead be characterized as “parallel verse,” a change in terminology that will also help to illuminate the enduring significance of the form. After all, pianwen is a category that has been applied retrospectively, but has no equivalent in the actual usage of Six Dynasties literary critics. In practice, the primary compiler of the Wenxuan, Xiao Tong 蕭統 (501–531), seems to have understood parallel verse as the ideal form of writing in general. Although the Wenxuan contains prose and verse works of other kinds, both the preface and the organization of the anthology highlight the superior qualities of ornate, formally symmetric, parallelistic writing.
This type of writing is best characterized as verse in English, since it obeys a strict formal principle: pairing of units of equal length, with syntactically similar words in corresponding positions. There is a venerable precedent for this usage in the characterization of the Biblical Psalms as verse, despite their lack of strict meter or end rhyme. Finally, the concept of “parallel verse” can aid us in the study of early medieval literature, for instance in dealing with the various writings of Lu Ji 陸機 (261–303), whose consistent use of parallelism marks a watershed in the history of the form.
Citation
Nicholas Morrow Williams. 2026. “Parallel Verse: The Ideal Form of Writing in the Wenxuan.” International Journal of Chinese Humanities 1: 73–113.