文苑英华

《文苑英华》是宋太宗时李昉、扈蒙、宋白、徐铉等二十余人共同编纂的文学总集。《文苑英华》于太平兴国七年（982年）开始编辑，后来宋太宗又命苏易简、王祐、范杲、宋湜及宋白等人参修。雍熙三年（986年）完成初稿，篇幅多达一千卷，所选诗文共二万三百余首。

特点

文苑英华选材局限与《文选》相衔接，上自南朝梁代，下至五代，按文体分赋、诗、歌行、杂文，还收录了诏诰、书判、表疏、碑志……等，可用来考订史实。其中唐人作品占十分之九。

缺点

《文苑英华》成书草率，内容有不少缺失，“原修书时，历年颇多，非出一手。丛脞重复，首尾冲决。一诗或指为二，二诗或合为一，姓氏差互，先后颠倒，不可胜计”。

校刊

景德四年（1007年）又重新编选，并进行“删繁补阙”的工作。祥符二年（1009年）又命石待问、张秉、薛映、戚纶、陈彭年等复校。终北宋一朝，《文苑英华》迟未刊刻。南宋时，还在做补删工作，周必大退隐“老丘园”，邀集胡柯、彭叔夏等好友进行再校订工作，书中多补有异文“一作……”或“集作……”，嘉泰元年（1201年）终于付印。今存者即此校定本。彭叔夏曾将部分校文写成《文苑英华辨证》十卷，将问题分“十类四十五子目”。清朝劳格又有《辩证拾遗》。一般以为清朝编《全唐文》其实是以《文苑英华》为底本，如李商隐《樊南文集》即是从《文苑英华》中辑出。李慈铭《越缦堂日记》指出“所收赋至一百五十卷，唐赋居十之七八，陈陈相因，最无足现”；又说“其杂文中不收柳柳州《乞巧文》、昌黎《送穷文》，而收沈下贤为邯郸妓李容子所作《乞巧文》，殊不可解。”

The Wenyuan Yinghua (Chinese: 文苑英華), sometimes translated as Finest Blossoms in the Garden of Literature, is an anthology of poetry, odes, songs and writings from the Liang dynasty to the Five Dynasties era.

Wenyuan Yinghua is a showreel of literature from around the Song dynasty. The book was initially compiled by a team of officers including Song Bai (宋白), Hu Meng (扈蒙), and Xu Xuan (徐鉉) under an imperial order from 982 to 986 during the Northern Song dynasty. Southern Song scholar Zhou Bida printed the book at last in 1204, while four extensive alterations and countless minor revisions were put forth in the extent of the past 200 years. Wenyuan Yinghua is divided into 1,000 volumes and 38 genera by sections with 19,102 pieces of works written by about 2,200 authors; much of the crucial compilation of the writings came from the Tang dynasty scholars. It is considered one of the Four Great Books of Song.

Despite this, Wenyuan Yinghua has a massive amount of valuable content regarding Chinese history and literature; this work has been mostly neglected by scholars in both the East and West since the book was composed and printed. It has an extensive association with other Tang and Song Chinese literary anthologies.

The compilation of Wenyuan Yinghua

The compilation started in the early years of the Song dynasty. The ruling family of Song, the Zhao family, seized power to the throne by conducting a coup d'état on the former Zhou dynasty. Song faces threats from the north and south in its early years. The founding emperor of Song wants to secure his place and increase the legitimacy of his reign by leaving a mark in literature. Thus, he started the compilation of Wenyuan Yinghua.

The compilers, led by Zhou Bida, come from all over China. Among the leading officials of the project, Xu Xuan comes from Guiji. He newly surrendered to Song after the fall of Nan Tang, where he was a court poet there. Wu Shu came from Danyang, and Lü Wenzhong was born in Xin'an, Hebei. The whole picture is that the emperor wants every talent in every background and birth to attribute to the compilation.

The compilation of Wenyuan Yinghua lasted for several emperors in Song, during which emperors had a significant impact on the selection of work. Emperor Taizong of Song enlisted several Song poems he preferred in Wenyuan Yinghua. He also appointed the chief editor personally to make sure only the literature work of the best quality is composed. Emperor Zhenzong showed a similar attitude toward the work.

This influence from emperors made Wenyuan Yinghua biased towards emphasizing the importance of the emperor and the good deed they have done, acting as propaganda to justify the right of imperial autocracy.

Literacy techniques and genres

Wenyuan Yinghua includes literature of all forms, including poems, lyrics, and articles. These writings cover a wide range of topics, from the story of a heroic act to the poet's philosophical emotion about an object.

Poems, songs, hymns

Poems and songs are famous types of literature genres in the Tang and Song dynasties. They have different names in Chinese, such as "Fu", "Shi", "Ci", "Yuefu Shi", and "Jue Ju". They are all types of poems, but each represents different poetic composition rules and forms.

Many of the works of the highest regard in Wenyuan Yinghua combine the writer's description of events and the expression of opinions. The writers usually start describing an event or object in the first few lines and carry on to expressing their ideas deriving from the event.