Lǐ Guāng 李光
Style name Tàifā 泰發; hào (sobriquet, adopted in the Lǐngnán exile years) Dú Yì lǎorén 讀易老人 (“Old Man Reading the Yì”); posthumous title Zhuāngjiǎn 莊簡. Native of Shàngyú 上虞 in Yuèzhōu 越州 (modern Shàoxīng, Zhèjiāng). Lifedates 1078–1159 (CBDB; the Kanripo catalog gives only “d. 1155,” apparently confusing his rehabilitation date with his death date). The Sòngshǐ (juan 363) gives him a substantial biography in the Zhōng yì zhuàn (“Loyal-and-Righteous Officials”).
Jìnshì of 1106 (Chóngníng 5). Student of the late-Northern-Sòng moralist Liú Ānshì 劉安世 (the same teacher who corrected Chén Guàn — see KR1a0018). Held a series of provincial appointments under Huīzōng; after the southern crossing rose under Gāozōng to Cānzhī zhèngshì 參知政事 (“Vice Privy Councillor”). His 1140 (Shàoxīng gēngshēn) memorial against the peace negotiations with the Jin gave the chancellor Qín Huì 秦檜 the opening to demote and exile him; he spent fifteen years in Lǐngnán 嶺南 (Hǎinán and Guǎngxī), in the same exile circle as Hú Quán 胡銓 and Zhào Dǐng 趙鼎. Rehabilitated in 1156 after Qín Huì’s 1155 death; died in 1159 at age 82.
One of the canonical Sì míngchén 四名臣 (“Four Famous Officials”) of the early Southern Sòng — together with Lǐ Gāng 李綱, Zhào Dǐng, and Hú Quán — the recovery party’s principal voices against Qín Huì’s peace-and-cession program.
His sole substantial surviving scholarly work:
- [[KR1a0022|Dú Yì xiángshuō]] 讀易詳說 in ten juan — the Yì commentary composed during the Lǐngnán exile, reflecting his meditation on the canon as a guide to ruler-and-minister conduct under unfavourable political circumstance. Lost in the Míng and recovered for the Sìkù from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn. The Sòngshǐ records it as Yì zhuàn; other Sòng catalogues as Dú Yì lǎorén jiě shuō — same work under different titles.
His collected prose Lǐ Zhuāngjiǎn gōng wénjí 莊簡集 (in Sìkù WYG reprints) is the principal witness for his memorials, prose-prefaces (including the locus-classicus preface he wrote for Hú Quán’s lost Yì jiě), and exile-period verse.