律诗四联“起承转合”之说，就现存文献来看始于元代的杨载、范梈两家。杨载主要是总结唐宋时期对律诗四联的论说，略参己见。范梈的论说可能具有宋末江西乡邦诗学的背景。范梈主张起承转合不仅可用于近体诗还可用于一切文学，他对诗歌中的起承转合也提出了自己的标准。明清人说到起承转合，一般引用的是范梈而不是杨载。明清人对起承转合有赞成和反对两派。明代复古派对起承转合之说有相当的接受，清初的徐增、王士禛则站在自己的诗学立场上，对起承转合有新的发挥。明清人更多的还是批评起承转合，李东阳《怀麓堂诗话》先肇其端，清代冯班、吴乔，对之极尽贬斥。但即使批评此说的人，一般也认可其作为“训蒙之法”的存在，可见此说在明清时期已经广泛应用于诗歌教学，并一直延续到今天。

The existent scholarship shows that the compositional structure of the four couplets in a regulated poem as "Introduction, Development, Contrast, and Conclusion" was first proposed by Yang Zai and Fan Peng in the Yuan Dynasty. Yang Zai summarized various comments and arguments on metric prosody in the Tang and Song dynasties, modified by his own views, while Fan Peng argued that the structuring might apply not only to regulated verse but to all the literary creation. Fan Peng had also proposed his own criteria for the structuring of regulated verse, based perhaps on his own Jiangxi local poetics. Fan Peng's structure for regulated verse became more prominent and was later debated among the Ming and Qing dynasties poetic scholars, with the revivalists in the Ming dynasty generally accepting Fan's proposition and Xu Zeng and Wang Shizhen in the Qing dynasty disapproving it on the basis of their own poetic agenda. While being ridiculed for its rigidity by such scholars as Feng Ban and Wu Qiao in the Qing dynasty, Fan Peng's structure for regulated verse was generally believed to be sound as an introductory approach to enlighten children, which was practiced in the Ming and Qing dynasties till today．