Elegies of the South was the earliest collection of romantic poems written by poets of the largest State of Chu along the Blue River or the Yangzi Valley, permeated with time-hallowed tradition, fantastic imagination and violent emotions of a mythical world.
Qu Yuan (340–278 B. C.) was the most important Chu poet who lived at a time when romanticism or shamanism in the South came into contact with realism in the North. He became the greatest lyrical poet in ancient China as a result of the contact.
