Abstract: Ouyang Xiu regarded poetry as derived from music and he would prescribe poetry with his idea of music. His idea can be traced back to "Records of Music (yue ji)" in The Book of Rites, as he argued that music is originated from the vital energy (qi) of Yin and Yang. However, he abstracted the materiality from poetry and thus attributed emotional appeal to both music and poetry as their main function. In Ouyang's view, the imbalance of vital energy between Yin and Yang manifests in the diversity of emotions in music and poetry, while the circulation of the vital energy between the heaven and the earthly world manifests in the ubiquity of emotions. The diversity of emotions, as contaminated by unorthodox elements, causes the crippled sublimity of music and poetry, whereas the ubiquity of emotions has helped to maintain the status of music and poetry. Henceforth, in quite a few areas of the Northern Song Dynasty culture scene there emerged a tendency to hold onto the orthodox ideas while imbibing heterogeneous elements, of which Ouyang Xiu is a pioneer.

Key words: Ouyang Xiu, music studies, poetics, emotion, orthodoxy, heterogenity