Even though most people today tend to overlook the idea of “feng-ya-cheng-pian” (風雅正變) when interpreting the Book of Songs, this concept played an important role in and had a major influence on traditional interpretation of the Book of Songs. In light of this, this paper attempts to reach a clearer understanding of this concept by looking at its meaning, origin, characteristics, and development of the concept. Discussion in this paper is divided into four sections, as follows: 1. the meaning of “feng-ya-cheng-pain”; 2. the origin of the term; 3. characteristics of the concept; 4. the development of and the reaction against the concept. Herein we conclude that the notion “feng-ya-cheng-pian” appears in a preliminary form in the “mao-shih-kuan-chu-hsu” (more commonly referred to as the “shih-ta-hsu”) and was fully fleshed out by the time of Cheng Hsuan's commentary on the Book of Songs. It characteristics include tendencies to “cloak interpretation in description”, “an emphasis on the prescriptive role of the Book of Songs”, and “an emphasis to achieve overall consistency in intepretation of the classics”. This notion played a primary role in interpretation of the Book of Songs from the Han Dynasty, through the Wei and Chin Dynasties, and into the Tang Dynasty. By the time of the Song Dynasty, though, the prevailing atmosphere of doubting the classics led to this notion coming under criticism, a trend that has continued into the present.