Since Chen Shixiang, from the perspective of Western lyric poetry, suggested the idea of "lyric tradition" in Chinese literature, scholars have tended to stress the poets' interiority and stirring of emotions, emphasizing a worldview rooted in affect. The late-Han and Wei-Jin poetry and prose were taken as exemplars to advance their theories. Yet they have overlooked the important role the Han period-the great span of time characterized by expression of the collective social will-played in constituting the lyric tradition. Drawing on the "Greater Preface" to the Book of Songs, I focus on the topics of "expressing intent" (yanzhi) and "comparison" and "affective image" (bi and xing) to introduce and investigate more fully the constitutive materials of the lyric tradition. My goal is to locate the possible planes of interpretation, and to demarcate a critical space for meaningful discussions of the "Greater Preface." The relevant background is inextricably linked to the textual environment in which the original materials existed, which forms the horizon of expectation of the "Greater Preface" writers. This relevant background calls forth the points of view of the previous and succeeding generations from which they understand things, and invokes the manners they lived. It is, in short, unwise to confine analysis to merely the individual's emotions. In the process of the formation of the lyric tradition from pre-Qin to Han times, we observe a process of transformation from "musical education" (yue jiao) to "poetic education" (shi jiao), from praising the "six poems" (liu shi) to emphasizing the meaning of individual words in the spirit of the "six principles" (liu yi). Particularly, since the practice in which "poems were cited for the purpose of analogy," intellectuals had made full use of analogies pointing to stock natural images and phenomena. In the process of negotiating how to read and how to make use of the affective means available at the time, they laid the foundation of subjective expression for later poets. At the same time, they set forth a lyric tradition that was at once intellectual and emotional.