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In his early years, Ouyang Xiu put a lot of effort into parallelism and studied Korean seriously, laying a solid foundation for his future ancient writing. After he met Yin Zhu in Luoyang, he consciously learned concise and rigorous ancient writing from Yin, and wrote with ancient writing as the main style, but also paid attention to the diversification of the form. Ouyang Xiu's attitude towards writing was extremely serious, and he often revised it repeatedly before finalizing the draft. His deep learning and hard practice made his prose creation outstanding achievements.

Ouyang Xiu's prose is rich in content and in various forms. Whether it is argument or narrative, it is made with action and sentiment. Some of his argumentative essays are directly related to the political struggles at that time. For example, the "Letter to the Gaosi" written in his early years revealed and criticized Gao Ruonai for his despicable behavior of changing politically, with clear right and wrong, righteous words and harsh words, and full of political passion. For example, the "On the Fraternity" written in the Qingli period, in response to the conservative forces' slandering Fan Zhongyan and others' franticism, it clearly put forward the argument that "the villain has no friends, but only the gentleman has it", which strongly refuted the fallacy of political enemies and showed the innovators' ambition and righteousness and failures.

Human courage. This type of article has positive substantive content and is a model for the organic combination of the actual function and artistic value of ancient Chinese. Ouyang Xiu has another type of argumentative essay that has no direct relationship with real politics, but it expresses the author's profound thoughts on history and life. For example, some prefaces in "History of the Five Dynasties", which summarize the historical lessons of the Five Dynasties, and clearly expresses the author's praise and criticism, as well as the historical view that the rise and fall of the country lies in human affairs rather than destiny. For example, the preface he wrote for his friend's collection not only comments on his literary achievements, but also expresses his feelings about the life experiences of life and death, prosperity and decline, success and failure, and is by no means a writing for the sake of writing.

Ouyang Xiu's narrative essays are also mentioned in detail. For example, historical prose like "Records of the Five Dynasties", even works such as pavilions, sorrow and sacrifices, and steles and other works have fulfilling content. For example, "Fengle Pavilion" has detailed descriptions of the historical stories, geographical environment and even customs of Chuzhou. For example, "The Tails of the Tails" recall their parents' good words and deeds, and the details are detailed and realistic and lifelike. This effect is by no means possible by false words.

Ouyang Xiu's prose has a strong emotional color. His political essays are generous and emotional; historical essays are back and forth, and they are full of emotion; other essays pay more attention to lyricism, sorrow and joy are sincere, and the love and text are in harmony. For example, "Preface to the Collection of Poems of Interpretation of Secrets", with just a few strokes, Interpretation of Secrets, the unrestrained and uneven experiences of Shi Manqing's two strange men have been vividly revealed on the paper, and the author's respect and regret for the two and the passing of time and the changes of personnel are also overflowing between the lines, touching. In Ouyang Xiu's writing, the practical and aesthetic nature of prose is fully displayed, and the three functions of narrative, argumentative and lyricism of prose have also been highly organically integrated.

Ouyang Xiu's language is concise and fluent, and his writing is gentle and gentle, creating a new style that is easy and natural, which is unique beyond the Korean and Liu's harshness. For example, the opening paragraph of "The Drunken Old Man's Pavilion" is easy and clear, crystal clear and elegant, both concise and concise, round and light, without any sense of stagnation and embarrassment. The deep emotion and precise discussion are all expressed in a tactful and implicit tone, talking in a leisurely and orderly manner. This approachable style of writing is obviously more easily accepted by readers, so it has broad development prospects, and the development history of prose in the Song Dynasty proves this point.

Ouyang Xiu's creations made the genre of prose more abundant and more complete. Ouyang Xiu's high achievements in prose creation complement his correct ancient theories, thus creating a generation of literary style.[3]

The ancient prose movement of the Northern Song Dynasty led by Ouyang Xiu was completely successful, ending the dominance of parallel prose for six hundred years since the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and providing a new type of ancient prose that facilitates discussion of things and reasoning, and expresses his aspirations in the nine hundred years of Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. Ouyang Xiu also became a master of articles of a generation. [27]

In political life, Ouyang Xiu was strong and upright and brave. His poems and some of the "elegant lyrics" showed this aspect of his character. His daily private life, especially his life when he was young, was quite indulgent. [31] Therefore, he also wrote some erotic lyrics with "substantial spirit", some of which were vulgar, while others were healthier in content and mood, such as "Nan Gezi" (Feng Kiss Golden Mud Belt) and "Yu Lou Chun" (When I came to the pillow to compete for nothing at night). Such lyrics reflect an aesthetic taste that is different from the aristocratic tendency of the Five Dynasties to pursue rich and gorgeous language, and is close to the aesthetic taste of the citizens.

Another manifestation of Ouyang Xiu's ci lies in the direction of popularization is that he learned from and absorbed the expression techniques of folk songs such as "frozen couplets" and created two sets of "Guzi Ci" "Fisherman's Proud" which sings the December solar term, which had a great influence on Su Shi's later lyrics by using the couplets to form lyrics; and the other two poems "Fisherman's Proud" ("The sound of two oars suddenly sounded at the bottom of the flower" and "The lotus leaves and fields are clear and clear") describe the romantic joy and love distress of the lotus picker girl, with a fresh style and a folk song style. In the history of Song Dynasty Ci, Ouyang Xiu was the first person to actively learn from folk songs, which also created his fresh and bright artistic style. The "Ten Songs of Picking Sangzi" sings West Lake in Yingzhou concentrate on reflecting this style feature. [3]

Poetry

While changing the literary style, Ouyang Xiu also innovated the poetry style. He attached great importance to the characteristics of Han Yu's poetry and proposed the poetry theory of "poetry is exhausted and then work hard". Compared with the proposition of Xikun poets, Ouyang Xiu's poetry theory undoubtedly contains the spirit of attaching importance to life content. Ouyang Xiu's poetry creation is based on reversing the bad tendency of Xikun style to get out of reality, which reflects the initial awareness of the poets of the Song Dynasty to correct the poetic style of the late Tang and Five Dynasties.

There are some works in Ou's poems that are based on social reality, such as "Food Fertilizers" revealing the unreasonable reality that farmers who grow grain can only use wine lees to satisfy hunger, and "Border House" describes the unfortunate experiences of the people in the border areas of the Song and Liao dynasties. However, the more important content of Ou's poems is to express personal life experiences or express personal feelings, as well as chanting historical themes. Because his poems like this contain deep life feelings, they are essentially different from similar poems in Xikun style. For example, "The Legend of the Mother" (The Spring Breeze is Suspected that it cannot be the end of the world).
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