On the Major Artistic Features of LI Qing-zhao's Later-Period Ci(Lyrics)

After the government of the Song Dynasty was forced to move the capital to the south of China, LI Qing zhao, a great female Ci composer of the Song Dynasty, was doomed to suffer a host of misfortunes. She had to suffer not only the subjugation of her country, but also the decline of her family and the death of her beloved husband, all of which led her to live in great solitude in her later years. In narrating the bitterness and hardship, she underwent in the turmoil and chaos of war. Her Ci (lyrics) revealed that she was always fondly thinking of her native place in the North and yearning for the past good old days while lamenting over the miserable wandering life. We can savor and sense great depression, bitterness and sentiment between the lines. Compared with her early works, LI Qing zhao's later period Ci works attained a higher level in terms of both the depth of thinking and the artistic condensation; moreover, her lively, graceful and restrained literary style had also become a more sentimental and sorrowful one.