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Chou Pang-yen 周邦彥 (tzu, Mei-ch' eng 美成 , hao, Ch'ing-chen 清真 ,1056-1121) was one of the most influential poets in the tz'u* tradition. Wang Kuo-wei* said his position with regard to the Sung lyric was analogous to that of Tu Fu* in T'ang poetry. Another critic, Chu Wei-chih 朱維之, has written,“In the ’orthodox school of the lyric,’ the style must be voluptuous, the lines finely crafted, and everything must harmonize with the music —this is what is meant by the “delicately restrained” ( wan- yüeh宛約) style. Liu Yung* began this school, Ch'in Kuan秦觀(1049-1100) and Ho Chu* established it, and Chou Pang-yen and Li Ch'ing-chao* brought it to culmination."

  The course of Chou's official career is well known. The details of his personal life are more obscure, but he is the subject of several famous anecdotes portraying him as a romantic and an intimate of the most famous courtesans of the day.

  His life seems to have been easier than that of many contemporary literati; he was apparently a supporter of the “New Policies" but not a principal in political infighting. In 1083, as a student in the National University, he presented to the throne a fu * on the Sung capital,“Pien-tu fu”汴都斌, in which he praised the New Policies. He was quickly raised to the office of Chief of Learning in the National University, where he remained for five years. From 1087 to 1092, Chou was outside the capital as an Instructor, as the “Old Polices Faction" held sway over the government From 1093 to 1096, although the New Polices forces were regaining power, he did not return to the capital, but held the post of Administrator of Li-shui hsien 溧水縣. One lyric ( “Man-t’ing fang”滿庭芳) written there reveals his discomfort with the climate and nostalgia for the capital, and he may indeed have felt forgotten and oppressed in that out-of-the-way place. He had an interest in Taoism at this time: Ch’iang Huan 強煥, who held 0ffice at Li-shui over eighty years later, reports seeing a pavilion and a hall to which Chou had given names from stories of "spirits and immortals." Ch'iang collected and published 182 lyrics by Chou, asserting that there was a connection between the popularity of his songs and the lingering good memories among the populace of his administration. Some of Chou's few surviving shih* have Taoist themes; if they were written during his tenure in Li-shui, one wonders if the proximity of Mao-shan, center of a thriving Taoist tradition, influenced him.

  In 1098， once again in the capital, Chou re-presented his "Pien-tu fu"; it was received by Emperor Che-tsung with even more enthusiasm than Emperor Shen-   tsung had shown fifteen years earlier. From this time until 1118, Chou generally held office in the capital, with two brief tenures as Administrator in the provinces. In 1116, he was made Supervisor of the Imperial Music Bureau, an appropriate position for someone with his musical ability.

  Chou had not been in the Ta-sheng fu very long before he was sent out again as an Administrator. Caught in the path of the Fang-la Rebellion in 1120, he fled to Hangchow. In the following year, soon after reaching Nanking and the imperial shrine there, of which he had been made Intendant, he died.

Chou Pang-yen was an essayist and poet as well as a lyricist, but most of his prose and shin have been lost. A printed edition of his works made at the beginning of the thirteenth century; it seems to have survived into the Ming, for it is cited by the Yung-lo ta-tien. * The extant poems are, in the words of one modern researcher, “exhilarating and valiant,” quite different from his lyrics.

  The lyrics are, to quote James J. Y. Liu, “subtle and sophisticated but do not strike one with immediate force. The poetic words of his lyrics are translucent, if not opaque, rather than crystalline, and their verbal structures are like ornately carved ivory or jade. . . .” Chou's opacity is the result of several factors: frequent use of images of substitution and of transference; a tendency to requiring explication for the moderately educated reader, do have a distancing effect; and the absence of a definite persona speaking to a single specific theme —particularly in the longer lyrics. The situation or predicament of the speaker is often implied by the physical objects or phenomena around him/her, or it may be implied by the allusions used. Sometimes the train of thought shifts with the incorporation of a new allusion or a fresh association suggested by the scene. The result is not an unstable or bewildering pasticcio, but an engagement of one's senses, feelings, and imagination in a richly layered experience. In their “explications” of his lyrics, critics often fondly describe the links, contrasts, and leaps which occur as one progresses through them, much as a connoisseur mentally repeats the parses, turns, and invisible links when he “reads” a piece of calligraphy.

  A few of Chou's lyrics are evidently allegorical, comprehensible only as they refer to Chou's political situation. However, it would be rash to impose such an interpretation on most of his lyrics, which treat the standard themes of love, longing, and ennui that come with the genre.

In comparison with Liu Yung, the great lyricist of the previous generation, Chou is clearly less direct. There is also an important difference in the two lyricists' musical sense. Whereas Liu may show a fairly wide variation in the number of syllables fitted to a given tiao調 (tune) or adapt a given tiao to different musical modes, Chou standardizes the number of syllables and the mode to be used for each tiao. Chou composed new tunes and is often said to have had a genius for music, but it would seem that his talent or taste was for codifying and perfecting an existing heritage, rather than improvising new possibilities. The same tendency is apparent in his contemporary lyricists, the genre matured. Because of the popularity of his lyrics throughout all levels of the literary audience, popular and elite, of the lyric tradition, Chou's metrical patterns became, and still are, the accepted models for the tiao which he used.

Han Yü 韓愈(tzu, T'ui-chih退之, 768-824)was a major figure in the history of Chinese literature , comparable in stature to Dante, Shakespeare, or Goethe in their respective literary traditions. He was among that small group of writers whose works not only became classics of the language ─required reading for all those with claims to literacy in succeeding generations ─but whose writings redefine and change the course of the tradition itself. Although Han Yü is best-known as a prose stylist ─the master shaper of the s o-called ku-wen* style─he was a stylistic innovator in the many genres in which he wrote , including poetry. And he was a major influence on the literary and intellectual life of his time , an important spokesman for a rejuvenated traditionalism that later emerged as Sung Neo Confucianism.

Han Yü was born into a family of scholars and minor officials in the area of modern Meng-hsien 孟縣in Honan. He was orphaned at the age of two and raised in the family of his older brother Han Hu i韓會 (740-781), from whom he received his early education and his disdain for the current literary style descended from Six Dynasties p'ien-wen.* The family endured southern exile in 777 , and in the early 780s the provincial rebellions in the Northeast caused further dislocation. Han Yü seems to have spent these early years in the provinces studying. He came to Ch'ang-an in 786 , and after four attempts passed the chin-shih  examination in 792. He failed three times, however, to pass the “Erudite Literatus” examination , which would have meant an immediate appointment in the central government. In desperation , he accepted employment in 796 on the staff of Tung Chin董晉 (724-799), the military governor at Pien-chou , and remained there until Tung's death in 799. These were important years for Han Yü's intellectual development , for in Pien-chou he formed lasting friendships with        Li Ao,* Meng Chiao,* Chang Chi,* and a number of lesser figures who formed the nucleus of “Han Yü's disciples" ( 韓門弟子), a literary coterie that looked to Han Yü as their leader.

He eventually secured his first position in the central government in 802 , as Erudite in the Directorate of Education , an institution with which he maintained a sporadic lifelong association , eventually becoming Chancellor in 820. In 803 he refused to join the political faction formed by Wang Shu-wen 王叔文 (753-806) in support of the heir apparent , Li Sung李誦 (761-806), and was exiled to Yang-shan 陽山in the far South. When this faction, which included Liu Tsung-Yüan* and Liu Yü-hsi ,* was vanquished in 805 , Han Yü's political fortunes also turned, and he was recalled to Ch'ang-an. His anticipation during the trip and the joy of reunion with literary friends in the capital , where the new government of Emperor Hsien-tsung (r. 805-820) was being formed , found expression in his works of the year 806 , Han Yü's annus mirabilis. Two of his most important poems ─the “Nan-shan shih" 南山詩 (Poem on the Southern Mountains) and the “Yüan-ho Sheng-te shih" 元和聖德詩 (Poem on the Sagacious Virtue of the Age of Primal Harmony), both extolling the virtue of the new emperor, date from this year. So probably does the “Ch'iu huai" 秋懷(Autumn Sentiments), perhaps his most famous agenda for a revived Confucianism.

But factional jealousies made life difficult and thwarted his hopes for quick success in the new government, and he requested transfer to Lo-yang in 807, remaining there until 811, when he again returned to Ch'ang-an. Han Yü was an ardent royalist and supporter of the use of military power to extend central government control over the autonomous provinces of the Northeast. In this cause, he was a partisan of the great Grand Councilor P'ei Tu 裴度 (765-839), the architect of Emperor Hsien-tsung's eventual suppression of the separatist forces. Han Yü took part in the campaigns against the separatists in Huai-hsi province in 817 and recorded the events in his famous “P'ing Huai-hsi pei" 平淮西碑 (Inscription on the Pacification of Huai-hsi), a text that well demonstrates the intimate connection between his literary, philosophical,  and political concerns.

In 819, perhaps lulled by the success of his patron P'ei Tu and misguided by excessive devotion to the emperor, he wrote the infamous “Lun Fo-ku piao" 論佛骨表 (Memorial on the Bone-Relic of the Buddha), in which he intimated that Hsien   tsung's participation in the veneration of a relic of the Buddha would shorten the sovereign's life. This was a severe act of lèse majresté, and only the intervention of Han Yü's powerful patrons saved him from the death penalty. He was exiled to Ch'ao-chou on the South China coast. He was back in the capital by 820, however, where he served in a series of upper echelon posts, including that of Mayor of Ch'ang-an, until his death in 824.

Han Yü’s “ancient-style" prose was an attempt to replace the contemporary p'ien-wen with a less florid, looser style better suited to the needs of a more flexible, utilitarian prose. Han Yü's ku-wen was thus not an imitation of ancient prose, but rather a new style based on the ancient (pre-Ch'in and Han) ideals of clarity, conciseness, and utility. To this end, he incorporated elements of colloquial rhythm, diction, and syntax into both prose and poetry, while at the same time reaffirming the Confucian classics as the basis of education and good writing. His most successful ku-wen compositions fuse these classical ideals with contemporary realities, and the flexibility of their style furnished an example to later generations of how to relate the classical tradition to contemporary literary needs. Han Yü is appropriately the first of the T'ang Sung pa-ta san-wen chia唐宋八大散文家 (Eight Great Prose Masters of the T'ang and Sung), which also included Liu Tsung yüan, Ou-yang Hsiu,* Wang An-shih, * Su Hsin* and his sons Su Ch'e* and Su Shih, * and Tseng Kung.*

The style of Han Yü's poetry is governed by the same passion for clarity that pervades his prose. He strives always for an accuracy and clarity appropriate to the content of the poem and its social context. Thus some critics have labeled the intricate style of the “Southern Mountain" baroque. But this intricacy is not pursued for its own sake; rather the verbal complexity reinforces the actual terrain of the mountains themselves. The style becomes an accurate and appropriate reflection of the reality. On the other hand, Han Yü's poetic corpus contains a great number of seemingly casual, conversational poems whose style seems quite close to popular speech. Some critics have postulated that these two styles present a contradiction and constitute a conflict with Han Yü himself. Yet both styles are governed by the twin principles of accuracy and appropriateness. Han Yü articulated these principles several times in his letters, stating that “the language of composition should be in accord with realty" ( 其文章言語, 與事相侔 ) and that “to adhere to reality in forming expressions was precisely what the ancient authors did" ( 因事以陳辭, 古之作者正如是爾 ).

Han Yü's theory and practice of literary style is an extension of his drive to rejuvenate Confucianism as a viable intellectual concern. Intellectual life during the T'ang was largely dominated by the great monastic schools of Buddhist scholasticism. In the eighth century, the Ch'an school gained in popularity by virtue of its direct appeal to intuition and experience rather than looking to commentary and book learning as sources of wisdom. This movement rapidly gained ground after the An Lu-shan Rebellion of 755, and Han Yü was exposed to its influence from an early age. Although violently opposed to monasticism and monkish exploitation of a superstitious peasantry, his drive to rejuvenate Confucianism by encouraging personal master-disciple relationships and by establishing an orthodox line of transmission for Confucian teaching owes much to contemporary Ch'an practice.

Politically, Han Yü favored a strong central government. This explains the special affection he maintained for Emperor Hsien-tsung, known historically as the “restorer" of the T'ang's political fortunes. Han Yü deplored the political and cultural fragmentation that had been tolerated in order to hold together the multiracial and cosmopolitan T'ang state. He was not per se anti-Buddhist and xenophobic as much as he desired a central state that vigorously promoted a cultural orthodoxy that was to be identical to his own rejuvenated Confucianism. When the emperor revealed himself to be more anxious to promote raw central power than to propagate cultural orthodoxy, Han Yü responded with the sense of outrage and betrayal that exudes from between the lines of the “Memorial on the Bone-Relic of the Buddha."