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| On the Yuefu Poetry of Wenyuan Yinghua: Gexing and Its Values in Yuefu Studies |
| Guo Li |
| School of Literature, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100089, China |
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Abstract During the Northern Song Dynasty, scholars led by Li Fang compiled Wenyuan Yinghua, which organized all its contents into 38 distinct categories. Within this anthology, the broad “Poetry” category contains a subcategory specifically named “Yuefu” dedicated to collecting Yuefu poems. The “Gexing” category exists as a parallel classification to “Poetry”. Although Wenyuan Yinghua formally separated “Gexing” works from the “Yuefu” category, it notably included some Yuefu poems within the “Gexing” section. Furthermore, “Yuefu” and “Gexing” categories include both old Yuefu poems and new Yuefu poems. This dual inclusion has made the anthology’s selection criteria and the compilers’ understanding of Yuefu poetry an unresolved question in scholarly research. To address this challenge, it becomes necessary to closely examine the distinctive features of both new and old Yuefu poems contained within the “Yuefu” and “Gexing” categories respectively.In previous academic studies, scholars have typically interpreted new Yuefu poetry through three dimensions: title, lyrics, and musicality, arguing that the “newness” of new Yuefu specifically referred to novel titles, innovative lyrics, and updated musical forms. However, beyond these traditional analytical frameworks, we can introduce a fourth dimension—thematic intent—to deepen our understanding. By incorporating this “thematic intent” perspective, new Yuefu can be divided into two categories: “new titles with old themes” and “new titles with new themes”. The former refers to works that adopt modernized titles while retaining traditional thematic content, whose essence remains rooted in imitation of classical prototypes despite the superficial innovations. The latter describes works that demonstrate originality in both their titles and thematic substance. Based on this framework, further analysis reveals Wenyuan Yinghua’s classification criteria for new Yuefu in its “Yuefu” and “Gexing” categories: works bearing Gexing-style title markers that belong to the “new titles with old themes” category were systematically placed in the “Yuefu” section, while those with Gexing-style titles categorized as “new titles with new themes”, along with selected new Yuefu works by Bai Juyi, were assigned to the “Gexing” section. This methodology resolves the longstanding confusion about why new Yuefu poems appear in both categories, demonstrating that the compilers differentiated works preserving classical thematic continuity from those pursuing thematic innovation while maintaining formal connections through shared titling conventions.Wenyuan Yinghua contains old Yuefu poems in both its “Gexing” and “Yuefu” categories. Quantitative analysis of the collected poems and their titles reveals that the vast majority of old Yuefu works were placed in the “Yuefu” category, demonstrating the compilers’ clear traditionalist view of Yuefu poetry, which primarily emphasized classical prototypes. As mentioned earlier, from the perspective of thematic content, the compilers of the Wenyuan Yinghua categorized new Yuefu poems with ancient themes into the “Yuefu” section, which also reflects their reverence for classic tradition in the concept of Yuefu. Notably, the old Yuefu poems included in the “Gexing” category share a common feature in terms of their titles: all bear title markers typical of Gexing poetry. These title features perfectly align with those of the “new titles with new themes” characterizing new Yuefu works in the same “Gexing” section. This parallelism indicates that the compilers intentionally selected old Yuefu poems displaying an implicit innovative tendency within their otherwise conservative framework. By clarifying this distinction—where the “Yuefu” category embodies a classical orientation and the “Gexing” category demonstrates selective modernizing preferences in their respective inclusions of old Yuefu—the apparent contradiction of ancient works appearing in both categories becomes fully resolvable.The compilers of Wenyuan Yinghua made deliberate distinctions in the classification of categories and the inclusion of works, highlighting the differences between “Yuefu” and “Gexing”. This move not only reflects the strong genre awareness of these compilers but also reveals their concept of Yuefu which values ancient styles. Yuefu poems in Wenyuan Yinghua: Gexing has significant value in the study of Yuefu. They can not only be used to supplement Yuefu Shiji ,but also serve as a reference for its textual criticism, and they have influenced later understandings of Yuefu.
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Received: 13 September 2024
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2026, Vol. 56 
