| The Shiren yuxie is a collection of poetics and related anecdotes edited by Wei Qingzhi of the Southern Song period, offering its reader a comprehensive spectrum of the poetic views of the Song literati.;Influenced by the Canglang shihua, the Tiaoxi yuyin conghua and writings on the structural aspects of poetry, Wei made extensive use of their contents and arranged the material in such a manner as to reflect his own poetic views. His book tackles two main themes: creative writings and writers. The first main theme includes poetic methods, learning from ancient writings, arranging poetic ideas, the process of literary creation and establishing one's unique style; the second main theme includes anecdotes about selected poets as well as the poetic works of those poets. The anecdotes do not touch on the poets' overall achievements and influence, but serve merely to provide more information about their lives and times. Wei's emphasis was obviously on the discussion of the poets' works, in which he successfully set up his own framework of literary criticism through his collection and arrangement of a large number of entries on the choice of words, presentation of ideas and projection of styles of selected poetic writings.;It is the aim of this thesis to analyse the rationale for the arrangement of material in the book, and the editor's poetic views as contained in the book's various themes. In so doing, a full understanding of the book's contents will be arrived at. |
