New-fangled Classical Chinese Unlike the literati of the Southern and Northern dynasty (420-589) who emphasized classical allusions and symmetrical verses, Han Yu left the world of the classics and instead chose the middle and lower classes as his point of departure. He wrote about mundane things in artistic, truly beautiful writing, and yet managed to indirectly express grander thinking about the governance of the nation.
古文新世界不同於南北朝文人著重引經據典的對仗功夫，韓愈從經典走出，自中下階層出發，將俚俗事物，寫成十分藝術性的美文，並且寓含國家修齊治平的大思想。