From Self-Indulgence to Moral Integrity:On Wang Yuchen′s Surpassing Bai Juyi′s Poetry

Bai Juyi took a self-indulgent life after he was degraded to jiangzhou. He tried to be divorced from reality; accordingly, his poetries began to sing his private feelings and his nature,whose principal content is the leisure and comfortable daily life of officials in feudal China. His character, deeds and his literary style, were respected as models to imitate by later generations from the later Tang dynasty and Five-dynasty historical period to the early Song dynasty. Wang yuchen made a great progress in the literature of relegated official and the literature of hermit in official that originated from Bai Juyi, and he poured his haughty and steadfast personality into the literature, his poetries full of spirit of the time. Wang is not just imitating Bai Juyi, but preceded him; his poems turned back to the convention of poem are to express one's will. Wang yuchen took a moral integrity spirit of that time into the Song dynasty literature, and he is regarded as the predecessor of literature renovation that came up in the North Song dynasty.