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Which writers led the Tang dynasty’s ancient-style prose movement?

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Scene from Romance of the Three Kingdoms — Chinese literature *Zhang Fei on the Long Sloped Bridge Turning Away One Million Wei Troops with a Powerful Stare*, woodblock colour print by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, 1884. It depicts a scene from the novel *Romance of the Three Kingdoms*.

The ancient-style prose movement, known as guwen, was led by two primary figures during the Tang dynasty: Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan.12

Han Yu initiated this major reform to challenge the highly artificial and restrictive pianwen (parallel prose) style that had dominated Chinese literature for nearly a millennium. By advocating for a return to the prose models of Zhou philosophers and early Han writers, Han Yu sought to grant writers the freedom to structure their work according to logic and content rather than rigid formal rules.13

Liu Zongyuan served as Han Yu’s chief associate in this movement. Together, they successfully promoted a more flexible, natural, and expressive classical prose style. Their efforts were so influential that both men were later recognized among the renowned "Eight Masters of Tang and Song".13