Stone Screen Ci Poems

Dai Fugu was a poet of the Southern Song dynasty. Details of his life, including his dates of birth and death and his native place, are no longer known, and publicly available information is limited. Judging from his extant works, he was active in the poetry world for a long time and was skilled in both shi and ci, and his works were often included by later anthologists. The library holds two of his works: the ci collection Shiping Ci and the poetry collection Songshi Chao: Shiping Shichao, which shows that his writing centers on classical poetry, with both shi and ci receiving attention. His poems mostly deal with travels, landscapes, and personal reflections, and his language is plain and natural rather than heavily polished; his ci carry on the lingering traditions of both the delicate and the bold styles of the Song dynasty and stress the sincere expression of feeling and aspiration. Dai Fugu's works circulated continuously after the Song dynasty, and Ming and Qing anthologies repeatedly included them, giving later readers some reference for understanding the life and emotions of middle- and lower-ranking literati in the Southern Song. Because historical sources are scattered and lost, the details of his life are difficult to verify, and research should rely mainly on the works themselves.