The Study On Letters Of Ouyang Xiu

Ouyang Xiu was the leader of the innovative prose and poetry movement of the North Song Dynasty. He was also a renowned historian and statesman. He wrote a considerably number of letters, in which he recorded his interactions with others, expressed his ideas on politics and academics. His letters, totaling 744, can be divided into two categories:shujian and shuqi, both of which still remain today, Thus, they are reliable resources for us to study his achievements in literature and probe deeper into his innermost thoughts.In this study, we used the letters of Ouyang Xiu as our primary resource. The full text divides five chapters.This article begins with a general introduction about the letters of Ouyang Xiu by analyzing his recipients as well as the time and place in which he wrote them.In the second part, this article proposes ideas about literature reflected in the correspondences of Ouyang Xiu, which reveals his standard on poetry review and his advocacy of poetry and prose writing.In the third part, this article presents Ouyang Xiu’s insights on the study of history and Confucian classics, which was also revealed in his correspondences. Ouyang Xiu played a major role in revolutionizing the method of studying Confucian classics. There are some unique insights in his study of Confucian classics that are directly expressed in his correspondences. As a historian, Ouyang Xiu accomplished outstanding achievements which are best represented by his work in compiling the New Tang History and the New History of the Five Dynasties. In his correspondences, he elaborated on the process of compiling the aforementioned books, which provided us with another reliable resource of his historical perspective.In the fourth section, this article demonstrates the artistic achievements that Ouyang Xiu had achieved. In his bamboo letters, his words are generally natural and easy to understand, directly expressing his feeling by using a combination of rhythmic and non-rhythmic sentences, whereas in his shuqi, he utilized simpler, more direct sentences without allusions, which contributed a lot in replacing the mannered and excessively rhythmic style popular then.In the fifth part, this article attempts to probe into Ouyang Xiu’s innermost thoughts, including his change in outlook, his deep friendships, and his awareness of being the unspoken leader of the literature community at that time, through analysis mentioned in the first part of the times, places, and recipients of his correspondences.