ABSTRACT
I T IS NEARLY impossible to discuss the evolution of Yuan Mei's style in a strictly linear order. Although casual readers of his works probably
have a fairly clear idea of what constitutes the "typical" Yuan Mei poem, he actually wrote in a number of quite distinct styles, most of which are already present, at least in an embryonic form, in Chapter One of his collected verse, which, if we believe the chronology he or some editor provided, must have been written during the two years 1736 and 1737. Therefore, the "evolution" of Yuan Mei's work consists of the gradual perfection of all these forms of poetry and sometimes rather sudden shifts in the proportions that anyone style makes up in his work as a whole. In addition, styles that may have been quite distinct in Yuan's early poetry tend to blend and merge together in his later works.
