author
active 12th century Yu Yan
A Southern Song critic remembered for one of the best-known classic books on Chinese poetry, he wrote with sharp taste and a strong belief in the spirit behind great verse. His ideas in Canglang Shihua helped shape how later readers and poets thought about poetic style and tradition.
1 Audiobook
滄浪詩話
by active 12th century Yu Yan
About the author
Active in the 13th century during the Southern Song, Yu Yan is better known as Yan Yu (嚴羽), a literary critic from Shaowu in present-day Fujian. Traditional sources describe him with the style names Danqiu and Yiqing, and the sobriquet Canglang Buke.
He is chiefly known for Canglang Shihua (Canglang Poetry Talks), a short but influential work of poetic criticism. In it, he discusses how poetry should be read and written, praises earlier models, and argues that the deepest quality in poetry cannot be reduced to technique alone.
Although few biographical details seem firmly established, his reputation has lasted because this book became a classic in Chinese literary thought. Readers still turn to him for a lively, opinionated view of what gives poetry its power.