Ōuyáng Jiǒng 歐陽炯 (896–971; written 歐陽烱 in the SBCK Huājiān jí edition — a graphic variant of the same name), official, cí 詞 lyricist, and author of the preface to the Huājiān jí KR4i0013. Native of Yìzhōu Huáyáng 益州華陽 (modern Chéngdū 成都, Sìchuān). Served successively under the Former Shǔ 前蜀 (907–925), the Hòu Shǔ 後蜀 (934–965), and, after the Sòng conquest of Shǔ in 965, the Northern Sòng. Under the Hòu Shǔ he rose to Hànlín xuéshì 翰林學士 and Ménxià shìláng tóng píngzhāng shì 門下侍郎同平章事 (Vice-Grand Councilor) — the apex of the Shǔ court bureaucracy. At the Huājiān jí compilation (940) he was the leading literary courtier and wrote the preface as the regime’s senior man of letters.
Seventeen cí by him are included in the Huājiān jí itself (he is listed as “Ōuyáng shèrén [Jiǒng]” 歐陽舎人[炯], 17 pieces). After the Sòng conquest, Sòng Tàizǔ took him to Biànjīng 汴京 where he held the office of Sànjì chángshì 散騎常侍. He died in 971 at the age of 76.
He is considered the principal theoretician of early cí through his Huājiān jí xù 花間集序 (940) — the foundational manifesto of the Huājiān aesthetic. The preface defends the writing of fine, elaborately-ornamented short cí for performance by female entertainers as a worthy elite practice (“polishing the jade, carving the agate”); it nominates Lǐ Bái’s 李白 Qīngpínglè 清平樂 set as the Táng precedent and Wēn Tíngyún 溫庭筠 as the immediate contemporary master. The preface is itself a celebrated piece of piánwén 駢文 (parallel prose) and is regularly anthologized as a major document of 10th-century literary thought.
No CBDB id. Biography: Shíguó Chūnqiū 十國春秋 j. 56; Xīn Wǔdài shǐ (scattered); standard modern reference is Lǐ Yīǎng 李一氓, Huājiān jí jiào 花間集校 (1958).