自胡適以來的文學史研究者常將英文Epic(「史詩」)誤譯為「敘詩」(應為Narrative poem)，並以此偏差的定義討論中有無敘事誠的問題，但「史詩」其實只是「敘事詩」中的一類。 學者也常引用西方敘事詩的標準審視中國詩，而認為中國並無敘事詩，忽略了不同地域、文化背景所發展的文學有個別性的差異。中國敘事詩受抒情主流的影響而具有抒情性，並未顯著表現出如西方敘事誠的客觀、長篇、線索複雜等特性，因此中國的抒情詩與敘事詩有時難以截然界分，這也正表現出中國詩以抒情為主流的特性。 儘管《詩經》中已有少數敘事誠的出現，但畢竟詩歌在發展早期已明顯傾向抒情，繼而成了傳統，因此中國敘事詩始終未能發達。敘事早期發展時所受的限制，途了過去學者曾有的見解之外，保守內向的民族性、缺乏挑戰命運的思想、詩被賦予教化功能、「詩言志」觀念影響、詩歌體制及語文的限制等因素，也對敘事詩的發展有所不利。

Researchers on literary history, including Hu Shi, often mistranslated “narrative poems” into “epics” and discussed the problem of the Chinese narrative from this wrong definition. Nevertheless, in fact, epics are only a sort of narrative poems. Researches also examined Chinese poetry with the standard of the western narrative poetry and considered that China had no narrative poetry. They neglected the individual differences of the literature which developed in different areas and cultural backgrounds. In fact, the Chinese narrative poetry, not like western poetry, was influenced a lost by the lyrical mainstream. As a result, sometimes it is hard to distinguish Chinese lyrics from narrative poetry clearly. Although several narrative poems were found in Sh-Jing, the Chinese poetry was traditionally very lyrical from the early stage. The Chinese narrative poetry couldn’t develop fully because of several reasons, such as the Chinese people’s conservative nature and the lack of the courage to challenge fate. In addition, the Chinese poetry was expected to have educational functions. It was also limited by the Chinese poetic format and some language features. All these elements may explain why the Chinese narrative poetry couldn’t develop well.