Of all the theories of literary creation produced during the Ming and Qing, the yi-centered theory is the most significant in volume and coherence. In Ming-Qing poetry criticism we find a staggering number of expositions on yi as the cardinal principle of poetic composition. Such concerted attention on a single critical term is rare. Further, these expositions are unusually coherent in two ways. First, they largely focus on the last creative phase as they seek to illuminate the activity of the creative mind while composing, a challenge that thwarted Lu Ji and Liu Xie (see §§50–52). Second, the critics who penned these works, often Ming Archaists and their Qing followers and sympathizers, are critics who place a high value on learning poetic art from the Tang masters. To prepare for discussion of these expositions, I first review the rich array of meanings the term yi that had accrued by...
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