北宋年間，陳師道《後山詩話》開風氣之先，興起了關於文學體裁的討論。他看出「詩」、「文」各自有其體式，杜詩、韓文都有極高的藝術成就，因而主張作家守住傳統的文體寫作規範，不贊同他們混淆各文體之間原有的寫作方式。其他較小範圍的次文類如「碑」、「記」，也同樣不宜跨文類寫作。本文疏理陳師道的文體觀，發覺他是從體製中看出體式，再轉移體式規範到風格的形成。這些說法於北宋文人常與他相呼應。他主張詩文各有體，譬如學詩要學杜甫，對於歐陽脩〈醉翁亭記〉的記敘給與肯定，范仲淹〈岳陽樓記〉則因為大量用對偶，帶有傳奇小說逞才炫技的成分而遭到排斥。陳師道的評論意見，影響深遠。

During the Northern Song Dynasty, and prior to Chen Shidao's Houshan Shihua as a preeminent criticism, the discussion on literary style was pervasive. He views that "poetry" and "prose" are the distinct genres in their own rights. Du Fu's poems and Han Yu's prose have been highly artistic achievements, the writers, thusly, should preserve the traditional style, and should not mix up with the other styles of writing. The rest of sub-genres, such as: "bei" and "ji," remains in the similar classification. Chen Shidao's view on stylistics in his categorization shows a stylistic configuration out of the cross-genre writings. His theory is also reverberating to the literati of the Northern Song Dynasty. Poetry and prose are distinct in genres; for examples, the poetry by Du Fu must be followed, the Record on the Drunken Pavillion by Ouyang Xiu must be learned, but the Record on Yueyang Tower must be rejected by its extensive symmetry with show-offing techniques in the style of "chuanqi" novel. His criticism of style makes a long great impact on literary criticism.