Abstract Through an analysis of a fragment of Classical Chinese poetry (lu shih or regulated verse) the paper argues for a demonstrable approach to the modelling of literary phenomena. The first two sections of the paper lay the groundwork for an extension of the analyzed fragment of ten poems by detailing a set of syntactic, semantic and poetic constraints which are described as rules operating over grammatical categories and lexical items. Section three discusses the application of these rules in the actual generation of two texts and shows the interaction of the earlier defined levels of analysis. The remainder of the paper briefly raises issues of methodological credibility for literary studies proposing: (1) the use of motivated fragments for detailed analysis, (2) the definition of rules which specify the interaction of the linguistic and literary elements, and (3) an extension of the fragment through the production of new texts falling within and testing the limitations of the analysis. These proposals are subject to theoretical considerations at each of the levels of analysis, and in turn solicit support for such considerations based on the validity of the model proposed and the texts it produces.
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