The “preTang style” labeled in the initial style of Volume 11, and the “ancienttone poetry” in Volumes 9 and 10 of Bai’s Collection of Poetrys were different names of the same style of poetry, lament poetry. In fact, the choice of the term “preTang style” rather than the “ancienttone poetry” was associated with Yuan Zhen, the actual compiler of Bai’s Collection in Imperial Title of Changqing’s change in idea and form of poetic classification and compilation. Since the midst of Imperial Title of Yuanhe, Yuan Zhen lessened his writing of ironic and analogous poems, and accordingly he ceased to use such titles of poetic styles as “preTang style”, “musical style”, and “regular style” when he compiled the collection of poetry in the late Imperial Title of Yuanhe and early Imperial Title of Changqing. Up to the 4th year of Imperial Title of Changqing (824 A.D.), when he was compiling the hundredvolume Yuan’s Collection of Poetry, Yuan classified his ironic and analogous poems as “old poems” and “Yuefu poems” but nonironic fivefoot poems as “ancientstyle poems” and “lament poems”. Similarly, when he was compiling Bai’s Collection of Poetry in Imperial Title of Changqing later that year, he labeled those fivefoot lament poems currently written by Bai Juyi as the “ancientstyle poems” in Volume 11, the last of the collection. This not only showed Yuan Zhen’s change in his writing taste and classification of poetic style, but also agreed with Bai Juyi’s evolution in subject matter of fivefoot poetry writing between the late Imperial Title of Yuanhe and early Imperial Title of Changqing.

Bai’s Collection of Poetry in Imperial Title of Changqing; ancienttone poetry; preTang style; Bai Juyi; Yuan Zhen