严羽

Yan Yu is an author of notable importance in the history of Song dynasty literary criticism, though public sources offer limited information about his life, and even the years of his birth and death cannot be precisely determined. Seven of his works are included here, most of them concerned with the writing and appreciation of poetry. Among them, Canglang shihua (Canglang's Remarks on Poetry) appears repeatedly in several editions, indicating that it is his most widely read and most closely studied representative work; there is also an entry from Song shi chao: Canglang yin ji chao, which gives a glimpse of his own verse. Common classifications place his work under literary appreciation, classical poetry, and modern poetry. Canglang shihua is known for its systematic poetics and has exerted a profound influence on later poetic criticism and creative ideas, making it an essential document for the study of classical poetics.