Centering my focus on a detailed translation of the poetry of Bai Juyi's New Yuefu, I will reconstruct the poet's world on the foundation of political allegory found within his verse. Bai Juyi once said that there are four ...

The Liang dynasty poet Xiao Gang’s “poems on things” (yongwu shi) have traditionally been read as shallow, overwrought descriptions of palace life devoid of the allegorical dimensions that were thought to ennoble the genre. ...