Animal Words and the Reading of Ancient Poems—A Case Study of The Book of Poetry
（Department of Chinese/Research Center of Chinese Linguistics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871）
Abstract: Taking The Book of Poetry as an example, this article mainly discusses the important role that animal words play in the reading of ancient po-ems and analyzes the problems that should be paid attention to when reading them. It emphatically analyzes the similarities and differences of the specific form of expression of Xing as a way of expression in poetry in The Book of Poetry and The Songs of Chu, and how the poetic writers make use of animal words to express what they want to convey. What's more, this article also analyses the cultural implications of several animal words in ancient poems, and presents our views about the interpretation of several poems by taking into account the cultural implications given to the animal words by the ancients.
Key Words: animal words; ancient poem; The Book of Poetry; cultural implications