Abstract: Famous ci-poetry scholar Xia Chengtao also attained highly in ancient poetry creation, and he was especially devoted to the song-form poetry but his achievements have not been done justice to in the academic circle. His poetic idea shown in his writing turns from his early unconventional diction to later plain style, and it reflects his pursuit of transformation of poetic forms. In the 1930s and 1940s when the social changes were drastic, Xia Chengtao tried to blend the ballad form with ci-poetic lyrics so as to create a new form. This paper examines Xia Chengtao's comments on ballad-form poetry in his Diaries of Learning Ci-Poems in Tianfeng Chamber and delineates his ballad-form poems in his Collected Poems from Tianfeng Chamber to examine his creative practice and traces his poetic transformation.

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