Wang Anshi's Historical Poems And North Song Dynasty Politics

Wang Anshi was an outstanding statesman, reformer and writer in Song dynasty. His achievements on epic poems were distinguished .He initiated an evolution with inflexible and enterprising will, which caused a great social sensation and evoked the fight between different parties which was later known as Xi Feng Conflict. It imposed great influences on many aspects of his historic poems, such as choice of topics, themes, styles, and inclination towards reversing the verdicts, etc.The historical poems written by Wang Anshi inherited the tradition of previous writers who expressed their emotions through versifying historical events, and used historical events for references. In the new background, Wang Anshi strived for novelty. He versified current state affairs to express his concern and ambitions, used historical events for reference to advocate transformation, debated the historic events, and expressed his extraordinary standpoints. These poems were ingenious, vigorous, and profound. Compared with Sima Guang, Su Shi and Su Zhe's historical poems, the intention, style, feature of Wang Anshi's creations were quite different and his value and practical significance were better than theirs. Wang Anshi's poems on history also exerted considerable influences on the creation of poems on history in the later periods. He not only promoted the innovation on poetic prose, but also had far-reaching influences over the creation of Jiangxi group, the poets in the later period and in Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasty. We can say that Wang Anshi's poems on history serve as a connecting link in the development of historical poems.