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Arts & Communication Esthetics in wényán and modern báihuà poetry

Figure 1. Repeated measure mixed ANOVA on reading experience by poem types and topics.

their choices of preference, they made a decision of
on which ones they liked better. Rather than giving a
comparative analysis of the classical and contemporary
poems in each pair, explanations of preference were
largely limited to the preferred poem (i.e., “I like the
classical poem for its complex imageries.”), producing a
series of descriptors describing where and why classical
or contemporary poems were likeable. An index was
created indicating the prevalence of the descriptors
when used to justify and explain preferences of the
classical or the contemporary poems (Figure 3). The
sequence the descriptors are presented in is arranged
to better showcase the differences between classical
Figure 2. Poem preference counts by poem topics.
and contemporary poems. Top reasons for participants
to be drawn to a poem, classical or contemporary,
the classical poems, six participants (12.5%) had higher were its effective use of imageries (“意象”), the
likelihood of preferring the contemporary poems, and 16 profundity in meaning (“意义深远”), and the ability
participants (33.33%) were indifferent.
to effectively express emotions (“情感表达”) and
Taking a further look at the differential characteristics elicit resonance (“引发共鸣”). Classical poems were
of classical and contemporary poems, participants’ appreciated for their ability to precisely (“精辟”)
explanations of their preference were examined using and effortlessly (“简洁”) deliver their messages while
content analysis. Two trained coders extracted 17 being beautiful (“优美”) and poetically (“诗意”)
in vivo codes (Table 2). By asking participants to submit elusive (“含蓄”). Contemporary poems, on the other

Volume 2 Issue 1 (2024) 6 https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.1825