Ye Xie was an important Qing-dynasty critic of poetry, though details of his life are limited in publicly available sources. His surviving works consist of two titles, Yuan Shi (On the Origins of Poetry) and Yigeng Suoyu, the former setting out his poetics and the latter comprising miscellaneous notes and reflections; together they show his interests in literary appreciation and Eastern philosophy. In discussing poetry, Ye Xie attends to the relation between poetic origins and changing forms and to the role of the creative subject, stressing that poetry should change with the times and opposing rigid imitation. His criticism combines theoretical construction with close attention to particular works, and his prose is concise and argumentative. Yuan Shi is often cited in later traditions of shihua and is useful for the study of Qing poetics. Because historical sources are limited, his native place, dates, and official career cannot be reliably established, so this introduction is confined to the subjects and style of his works.
