Yuán Jié 元結 (719–772)
Zì Cìshān 次山; hào Mànláng 漫郎 (“the Loose Gentleman”). Native of Hénán 河南 Lǔshān 魯山 (modern Lǔshān xiàn in central Hénán).
The leading Tiānbǎo / Dàlì-period prose stylist of the fùgǔ 復古 tradition — conventionally credited (alongside Xiāo Yǐngshì 蕭穎士 and Lǐ Huá 李華) with the mid-Táng turn back to the unornamented HànWèi archaic prose tradition that prepared the way for Hán Yù 韓愈 and the YuánHé 元和 gǔwén movement a generation later. Jìnshì of Tiānbǎo 12 (753) at age 35, after multiple failures.
His career was made by the An Lùshān rebellion: as kāngshù 抗敘 (military secretary) to the Shānnán dōngdào jiédùshǐ Lái Tián 來瑱 (758–760), and successively as Dàozhōu cìshǐ 道州刺史 (in modern Dàozhōu, Húnán; 763–766) and Róngzhōu cìshǐ 容州刺史 (in modern Guǎngxī; 766–768), Yuán Jié was credited with restoring civil order to the devastated southwestern provinces. He retired ca. 768 and died in Chángān in Dàlì 7 (772), aged 54.
His extant collection is the Cìshān jí KR4c0027 in 12 juǎn. His Yuánzǐ 元子 prose-treatises — programmatically ironic, often archaizing in deliberate opposition to the Tiānbǎo court style — were the principal model for the Tiānbǎo / Dàlì fùgǔ generation. The Dàozhōu mín 道州民 yuèfǔ (a 200-line verse memorial to Dàizōng on post-rebellion local suffering) is foundational to the late-Tang xīn yuèfǔ 新樂府 (new yuèfǔ) tradition. Hán Yù’s Yuán Cìshān mùbēi 元次山墓碑, composed for Yuán’s son almost a century later, is the principal subsequent tribute.
CBDB confirms 719–772 (cbdbId 32889); the catalog meta’s 723–772 follows an older Sòng dating now displaced.