一般认为，在社会矛盾激化、古典诗文传统失落的明中叶，“前七子”提出“古体必汉魏，近体必盛唐”的诗学理想，掀起了以恢复古学为目标的文学复古运动。然而，在复古运动如火如荼时，其实并没有所谓的“七子”之称，也没有确切的群体宗尚，如今为人熟知的那些描述都来自于复古运动沉寂后明清学者的建构。在古体诗上，前七子虽然以汉魏古诗为最高典范，但从最能体现师法汉魏之成果的乐府和五古拟诗来看，他们的复古并未局限于汉魏，也并不以字摹句拟为能事。在拟乐府时，前七子大量写作晋代以后产生的乐府古题，仿拟六朝歌行句式，选用汉魏以后拟乐府的新题旨。此外，他们的拟古乐府中的济世救民情怀和日常视角是受宋诗影响的结果，联章叙事和轮唱形式则反映出与当时戏曲文学的互动。在五古拟诗中，前七子虽然也有袭用字句、仿造情境的情况，但更强调情感的真实与个性。他们注重表达个人的现实经验和一己情怀，就普世问题展开更具道德性和理性色彩的思考并与古诗进行对话。平心而论，后人批评的取径偏狭与摹拟太甚之弊在前七子的古体拟诗中表现得尚不算严重，真正将这些弊病发展到极致并引发人们口诛笔伐的是后七子及复古派末流。后七子时代的复古派，文学复古的理想让位于领导者与追随者之间的权力交易，复古文学由此走向没落，而批评者在追本溯源时却将复古之弊归罪给了前七子。

It is generally believed that in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, when social conflicts intensified and the classical poetic tradition was lost, the Qianqizi put forward the poetic ideal of "the ancient poems must be modeled after Han and Wei poems, and regulated verse should be modeled after Tang poems", which set off the Literary Retro Movement. However, when the movement was in full swing, there was no so-called "Qianqizi", nor was there a precise poetic slogan, and the descriptions that are well-known today are the result of construction by Ming and Qing scholars. In ancient poetry, although the Qianqizi took the ancient poems of the Han and Wei Dynasties as the highest model, they did not limit their antiquity to the poems of Han and Wei, nor did they vigorously imitate the words and sentences. When writing Yuefu poems, the Qianqizi wrote a lot of ancient topics of Yuefu produced after the Jin Dynasty, imitated the sentence patterns of the Gexing of the Six Dynasties, and chose new themes that came out of the latter's Yuefu, which suggests that they were learning from more than just the Han and Wei. In addition, the world-saving sentiments and everyday perspectives in their Yuefu are the result of Song poetry influence, while the continuous chapter narrative and round-singing forms reflect interaction with the opera literature of the time. In the Ancient Five-Character Poems, the Qianqizi emphasized emotional authenticity and individuality, although they also copied words and phrases and imitated situations. They focused on expressing their personal experiences and feelings, thinking more morally and rationally about universal issues and dialoguing with ancient poems. In short, the disadvantages of narrowness of approach and too much imitation criticized by later critics were not serious in the ancient style of poetry of the Qianqizi, but it was the Houqizi and the followers that really developed these disadvantages to the extreme and triggered people's criticism. In the era of the Houqizi, the ideal of literary restoration gave way to power transactions between leaders and followers, which led to the decline of restoration literature, and critics blamed the Qianqizi for the shortcomings of the restoration in tracing back to its origins.