On The Liu Yuxi Septasyllabic,

With neat form and moderate length, qiyanlvshi(heptasyllabic regulated verse) as a traditional genre of ancient Chinese poem has made great development, although it is the last form of poem to take shape in China. Throughout history, many a poets tried their hand at composing poems in this form and found their own poetic style. Among them was Liu Yuri, a renowned poet in the middle period of the Tang Dynasty. He made continuous explanation and practice in composing heptasyllabic verse, leaving 181 poems of this form in his poem anthology. As far as this type of literature is concerned, his poems have topped in number those of any other poets in the early and prime time of the Tang Dynasty, including Du Fu, the "peot-sage" in ancient China. These poems also exceed his poems in other forms. Therefore, it can be concluded that Liu Yuxi attached special importance and emotion to this literary form.Why his heptasyllabic regulated verses were appreciated since the late years of the Tang Dynasty and some poem critics even hold the view that these poems should enjoy the same fame with those of Li Shangyin and Du Fu? Many factors can account for this fact, of which the primary one is his style-calm and firm, bold and generous-conquering people of later generations. The forming of such style can not be separated from his personal experiences, characters and the continuation of antecedent poets. Centering on the theme, the content and the style of his heptasyllabic regulated verse, this paper aims at remaking an objective judgments on the position of his heptasyllabic regulated verses in a way that takes his experiences and characters into consideration and places these poems in the development history of this literary form.This paper consists of four parts. Part one outlines the birth and development of this poem from the time before Liu Yuxi. This part paves the way for studying his heptasyllabic regulated verses through the analyses of the evolvement of this literary form in the early Tang Dynasty from three main aspects-form, theme and style. Part two concerns the study of his poems after division of the themes. This part intends to combine poems of the same theme with the poets' life experiences and characters in order to reveal reasons for the forming of his style. In this part, the following themes are embraced: describing objects, recalling antiquity, recording fare-well, responding to other poems, as well as other themes. Based on the previous part, the third one summarizes characteristics of his heptasyllabic regulated verse after detailed analyses-heroic, calm, succinct, and bright. In the last part, the author of this paper introduces the recognition history of Liu Yuxi's heptasyllabic regulated verse. Included are judgments by later generations, selection of his poems in anthology by others, these poems' continuation of tradition, as well as their influences in the future.