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Criticism on Ci Poetry / Cihua (Story-telling with Song and Speech)
主要含义有二：其一，指评论词人、词作、词派，记述词的本事及相关考订的著作，是中国古代诗学文献的一个组成部分。词话借鉴诗话而来，滥觞于北宋，成熟于南宋。著名的词话著作有清代陈廷焯（1853—1892）的《白雨斋词话》、王国维（1877—1927）的《人间词话》等。《人间词话》是王国维在接受了西方美学理论之后，融汇中西美学思想，以崭新的眼光对中国词人与词作做出的评论。表面上看，《人间词话》沿袭了中国传统的诗话、词话一类作品的体例，实际上它已初具理论体系，是晚清以来最有影响的文艺批评著作之一。其二，指盛行于元、明两代的一种说唱艺术形式（其中的“词”主要指词曲），如《大唐秦王词话》，有说有唱，韵文、散文并用。由宋代说话伎艺发展而来，明代中叶以后，逐渐演变为弹词和鼓词两个系统，并且取代了“词话”名称。又，明后期及清前期“词话”还曾用来指称夹杂词曲的章回体通俗小说，如《金瓶梅词话》等。
This term has a two-fold meaning. First, it refers to any work that offers commentaries on ci poets, poems, schools of ci poetry, the gist of a ci poem and textual criticisms. This type of work is a constituent part of scholarly inquiry into classical Chinese poetry. Criticism on ci poetry, with relatively long lines interspersed with shorter ones, are derived from criticism on the more usual type of classical Chinese poetry with a fixed number of characters to a line. They proliferated in the Northern Song Dynasty and matured in the Southern Song Dynasty. Famed works of ci poetry appreciation include Remarks on Ci Poetry from White Rain Studio by Chen Tingzhuo (1853-1892) and Poetic Remarks in the Human World by Wang Guowei (1877-1927), both from the Qing Dynasty. The latter work, written after Wang Guowei was influenced by Western aesthetic theories, and fusing Chinese and Western aesthetic thoughts together, was a criticism work on Chinese ci poets and ci poems made from a brand-new perspective. Although superficially it imitates the traditional way of offering commentaries on shi poetry and ci poetry, it in fact already attempts to construct a theoretic system. It has remained the most influential work of literary criticism since the late-Qing period.
Second, the term cihua also refers to an art of theatrical performance combining narratives and songs popular in the Yuan and Ming dynasties, in which the ci part is the singing of rhymed verse. As in Tales of Prince Qin of the Great Tang Dynasty, the performance intersperses singing with narrative, and verse with prose. It was developed from the performance of story-telling with speech and song of the Song Dynasty. After the mid-Ming Dynasty, such performances started to adopt two new terms: tanci (弹词), or story-telling with the accompaniment of musical instruments such as the Chinese lute, and guci (鼓词), or story-telling aided by a drum and clapper. Still later, these two new terms superseded the old. From the last years of the Ming to the first years of the Qing, this term was sometimes also used to refer to a popular novel with each chapter headed by a couplet giving the gist of its content which was interspersed with beautiful verse, for example Tales of the Golden Lotus.
引例 Citations：
◎玩月新诗偏有趣，兴唐词话更消闲。（《大唐秦王词话》第四十六回）
（赏月的新诗实在有趣，但讲唱大唐兴起的词话更能使听众消闲。）
The new-style poetry in praise of the moon may be fun, but spoken and sung tales of Li Shimin’s rise to the throne are far more intriguing. (Tales of Prince Qin of the Great Tang Dynasty)
◎词话者，纪词林之故实，辨词体之流变，道词家之短长也。（谢之勃《论词话》，《国专季刊》第一期）
（词话，用来记录词林的典故，辨析词体的流变，评论词家的优缺点。）
Commentaries on ci poetry record the classics of lyrical poetry, analyze the various styles of ci poetry, and enumerate the merits and shortcomings of ci poets. (Xie Zhibo: On Ci Poetry Commentaries)
