Liu Zongyuan (; 77328 November 819) was a Chinese philosopher, poet, and politician who lived during the

Tang Dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdom ...

. Liu was born in present-day

Yongji, Shanxi Yongji () is a county-level city in the prefecture-level city of Yuncheng, in the southwest of Shanxi province, China, bordering Shaanxi Shaanxi (alternatively Shensi, see § Name) is a landlocked province of China. Officially part of Nort ...

. Along with

Han Yu Han Yu (; 76825 December 824), courtesy name Tuizhi (), and commonly known by his posthumous name Han Wengong (韓文公), was a Chinese essayist, poet, philosopher, and politician during the Tang dynasty who significantly influenced the devel ...

, he was a founder of the Classical Prose Movement. He has been traditionally classed as one of the " Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song".

Biography

Liu Zongyuan was born in 773. His

courtesy name A courtesy name (), also known as a style name, is a name bestowed upon one at adulthood in addition to one's given name. This practice is a tradition in the East Asian cultural sphere, including China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.Ulrich Theob ...

was Zihou (). Liu Zongyuan's civil service career was initially successful; however, in 805, he fell out of favour with the imperial government because of his association with a failed reformist movement. He was exiled first to

Yongzhou Yongzhou, formerly known as Lingling, is a prefecture-level city in the south of Hunan province, People's Republic of China, located on the southern bank of the Xiang River, which is formed by the confluence of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, and b ...

Hunan Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi ...

, and then to

Liuzhou Liuzhou (; , IPA Pronunciation:) is a prefecture-level city in north-central Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China. The prefecture's population was 3,758,700 in 2010, including 1,436,599 in the built-up area made of 4 urban ...

, Guangxi, where he eventually became the city Governor. A park and temple in Liuzhou is dedicated to his memory. His exile allowed his literary career to flourish: he produced

poem Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...

fables Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular moral ...

, reflective travelogues and essays synthesizing elements of

Confucianism Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or a ...

Taoism Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmony with the '' Ta ...

and

Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religions, Indian religion or Indian philosophy#Buddhist philosophy, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha. ...

He died in 819.

Works

Liu's best-known travel pieces are the ''Eight Records of Excursions in

'' ( 永州八記). Around 180 of his poems are extant, of which five were collected in the anthology ''

Three Hundred Tang Poems The ''Three Hundred Tang Poems'' () is an anthology of poems from the Chinese Tang dynasty (618–907). It was first compiled around 1763 by Sun Zhu (1722–1778Yu, 64–65), who was a Qing Dynasty scholar and was also known as Hengtang Tuishi ...

''. Some of his works celebrate his freedom from office, while others mourn his banishment. One of his most famous poems is "''Jiangxue''" (), sometimes translated into English as "Winter Snow" or "River Snow". The poem has been an inspiration for many works of

Chinese painting Chinese painting () is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world. Painting in the traditional style is known today in Chinese as ''guó huà'' (), meaning "national painting" or "native painting", as opposed to Western style ...

. : Liu Zongyuan wrote ''Fei Guoyu'' (, ''Argument against the Harangues of the Various States''), a criticism of '' Guoyu''. In response, Liu Zhang ( 劉章, 1095–1177); Jiang Duanli (); and Yu Pan ( 1300), Yu Ji's ( 虞集, 1272–1348) younger brother, wrote texts titled ''Fei Fei Guoyu'' (; ''Argument against the Argument against the Harangues of the Various States'') in opposition to Liu Zongyuan's essay.Nienhauser, William H. Jr. (

University of Wisconsin-Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

).
A Third Look at "Li Wa Zhuan"
'' '' T'ang Studies'' (Print , Online ), 2007(25), pp. 91–110. Cited p.: 91-92.

References

Works cited

*Chen, Jo-shui, ''Liu Tsung-yüan and Intellectual Change in T'ang China, 773–819'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. . * Nienhauser Jr., William H.; Hartmann, Charles; Crawford, William Bruce; Walls, Jan W.; Neighbors, Lloyd, ''Liu Tsung-yüan'', New York: Twayne Publishers Inc., 1973. *

External links

Liu Zongyuan in Wengu textbase
five poems in traditional Chinese arrayed with Bynner's translation.

(Translated by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping) * * *Books of the ''

Quan Tangshi (''Complete Tang Poems'') is the largest collection of Tang poetry, containing some 49,000 lyric poems by more than twenty-two hundred poets. In 1705, it was commissioned at the direction of the Qing dynasty Kangxi Emperor and published unde ...

'' that include collected poems of Liu Zongyuan at the

Chinese Text Project The Chinese Text Project (CTP; ) is a digital library project that assembles collections of early Chinese texts. The name of the project in Chinese literally means "The Chinese Philosophical Book Digitization Project", showing its focus on books ...

:
Book 350

Book 351

Book 352

Book 353
{{DEFAULTSORT:Liu, Zongyuan 773 births 819 deaths 8th-century Chinese philosophers 8th-century Chinese poets 9th-century Chinese philosophers 9th-century Chinese poets Poets from Shanxi Politicians from Yuncheng Tang dynasty essayists Tang dynasty politicians from Shanxi Three Hundred Tang Poems poets

Biography

Works

See also

References

Works cited

External links