ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the Five Dynasties poets, moving on from Wang Guowei’s comments on Feng Yansi to his opinion of Li Yu, also known as the Last Emperor of the Southern Tang. Wang writes, When the ci reached Li Yu, its range of vision began to widen. Wang Guowei comments that with Li Yu, the ci departs from its original milieu of banquet halls and singing girls: when the ci reached Li Yu, its range of vision began to widen. Wang Guowei is asking, rhetorically, whether the atmosphere of these lines could ever be found either in Wen Tingyun’s or Wei Zhuang’s ci poems. Wang Guowei mentions the poem by the Daojun Emperor of the Song dynasty, “Yanshan ting”. Shi poets gradually began to adopt the ci genre to express their personal sorrows and emotions, and turned this genre that started as song lyrics set to tunes for singing girls into expressive poetry.
