Abstract: Wen Tong’s Yuefu Zayong from Collected Works of Danyuan demonstrated his art of yuefu with old titles. Using the old titles from yuefu poems of the Han, Wei, and Six dynasties, the poet paid special attention to guci (extant lyrics of yuefu before the Song dynasty), benshi (content of yuefu, namely, historical legends and folk tales) and historical situations that gave rise to tunes, which were all his sources of inspiration. Some of his works featured deliberately unpolished simplicity, following the poetic ideal promoted by such intellectual movement as fugu (return to the ancients), while some featured elaborate depiction and ingenious structure. Instead of being juxtaposed with gexing poems with new titles, the volume of Yuefu Zayong was independently compiled, which manifested his contemporaries’ consciousness of inheriting and passing on the old style of yuefu. Further, in his re-compilation of Collected Works of Danyuan, Jia Chengzhi put Yuefu Zayong forward, which indicated the Song literary scholars’ new understanding of the significance and value of the old genre of yuefu. Considering other volumes of poetry titled yuefu in literati’s collected works in the Song dynasty, this article maintains that the Song people had multiple and dynamic understanding of yuefu.

Key words: collected works of literati in the Song dynasty, yuefu, Wen Tong, Yuefu Zayong, Collected Works of Danyuan