Liu Zongyuan (; 77328 November 819) was a Chinese philosopher, poet, and politician who lived during the
Tang Dynasty
The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdom ...
. Liu was born in present-day
Yongji, Shanxi
Yongji () is a county-level city in the prefecture-level city of Yuncheng, in the southwest of Shanxi province, China, bordering Shaanxi
Shaanxi (alternatively Shensi, see § Name) is a landlocked province of China. Officially part of Nort ...
. Along with
Han Yu
Han Yu (; 76825 December 824), courtesy name Tuizhi (), and commonly known by his posthumous name Han Wengong (韓文公), was a Chinese essayist, poet, philosopher, and politician during the Tang dynasty who significantly influenced the devel ...
, he was a founder of the
Classical Prose Movement. He has been traditionally classed as one of the "
Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song".
Biography
Liu Zongyuan was born in 773. His
courtesy name
A courtesy name (), also known as a style name, is a name bestowed upon one at adulthood in addition to one's given name. This practice is a tradition in the East Asian cultural sphere, including China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.Ulrich Theob ...
was Zihou ().
Liu Zongyuan's
civil service career was initially successful; however, in 805, he fell out of favour with the imperial government because of his association with a failed reformist movement. He was exiled first to
Yongzhou
Yongzhou, formerly known as Lingling, is a prefecture-level city in the south of Hunan province, People's Republic of China, located on the southern bank of the Xiang River, which is formed by the confluence of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, and b ...
,
Hunan
Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi ...
, and then to
Liuzhou
Liuzhou (; , IPA Pronunciation:) is a prefecture-level city in north-central Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China. The prefecture's population was 3,758,700 in 2010, including 1,436,599 in the built-up area made of 4 urban ...
,
Guangxi, where he eventually became the city Governor. A park and temple in Liuzhou is dedicated to his memory. His exile allowed his literary career to flourish: he produced
poem
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...
s,
fables
Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral ...
, reflective travelogues and essays synthesizing elements of
Confucianism
Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or a ...
,
Taoism
Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the '' Ta ...
and
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religions, Indian religion or Indian philosophy#Buddhist philosophy, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha. ...
.
He died in 819.
Works
Liu's best-known travel pieces are the ''Eight Records of Excursions in
Yongzhou
Yongzhou, formerly known as Lingling, is a prefecture-level city in the south of Hunan province, People's Republic of China, located on the southern bank of the Xiang River, which is formed by the confluence of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, and b ...
'' (
永州八記). Around 180 of his poems are extant, of which five were collected in the anthology ''
Three Hundred Tang Poems
The ''Three Hundred Tang Poems'' () is an anthology of poems from the Chinese Tang dynasty (618–907). It was first compiled around 1763 by Sun Zhu (1722–1778Yu, 64–65), who was a Qing Dynasty scholar and was also known as Hengtang Tuishi ...
''. Some of his works celebrate his freedom from office, while others mourn his banishment.
One of his most famous poems is "''Jiangxue''" (), sometimes translated into English as "Winter Snow" or "River Snow". The poem has been an inspiration for many works of
Chinese painting
Chinese painting () is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world. Painting in the traditional style is known today in Chinese as ''guó huà'' (), meaning "national painting" or "native painting", as opposed to Western style ...
.
:
Liu Zongyuan wrote ''Fei Guoyu'' (, ''Argument against the Harangues of the Various States''), a criticism of ''
Guoyu''. In response,
Liu Zhang (
劉 章, 1095–1177);
Jiang Duanli (); and
Yu Pan ( 1300),
Yu Ji's (
虞 集, 1272–1348) younger brother, wrote texts titled ''Fei Fei Guoyu'' (; ''Argument against the Argument against the Harangues of the Various States'') in opposition to Liu Zongyuan's essay.
[Nienhauser, William H. Jr. (]University of Wisconsin-Madison
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...
).
A Third Look at "Li Wa Zhuan"
'' '' T'ang Studies'' (Print , Online ), 2007(25), pp. 91–110. Cited p.: 91-92.
See also
*
Classical Chinese poetry
Classical Chinese poetry is traditional Chinese poetry written in Classical Chinese and typified by certain traditional forms, or modes; traditional genres; and connections with particular historical periods, such as the poetry of the Tang dy ...
*
List of Three Hundred Tang Poems poets
*
Tang poetry
Tang poetry () refers to poetry written in or around the time of or in the characteristic style of China's Tang dynasty, (June 18, 618 – June 4, 907, including the 690–705 reign of Wu Zetian) and/or follows a certain style, often considered ...
References
Works cited
*Chen, Jo-shui, ''Liu Tsung-yüan and Intellectual Change in T'ang China, 773–819'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. .
*
Nienhauser Jr., William H.; Hartmann, Charles; Crawford, William Bruce; Walls, Jan W.; Neighbors, Lloyd, ''Liu Tsung-yüan'', New York: Twayne Publishers Inc., 1973.
*
External links
Liu Zongyuan in Wengu textbase five poems in traditional Chinese arrayed with Bynner's translation.
(Translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping)
*
*
*Books of the ''
Quan Tangshi
(''Complete Tang Poems'') is the largest collection of Tang poetry, containing some 49,000 lyric poems by more than twenty-two hundred poets. In 1705, it was commissioned at the direction of the Qing dynasty Kangxi Emperor and published unde ...
'' that include collected poems of Liu Zongyuan at the
Chinese Text Project
The Chinese Text Project (CTP; ) is a digital library project that assembles collections of early Chinese texts. The name of the project in Chinese literally means "The Chinese Philosophical Book Digitization Project", showing its focus on books ...
:
Book 350Book 351Book 352Book 353
{{DEFAULTSORT:Liu, Zongyuan
773 births
819 deaths
8th-century Chinese philosophers
8th-century Chinese poets
9th-century Chinese philosophers
9th-century Chinese poets
Poets from Shanxi
Politicians from Yuncheng
Tang dynasty essayists
Tang dynasty politicians from Shanxi
Three Hundred Tang Poems poets