Traditional Chinese literary criticism emphasized the life of the author when interpreting a work , a practice which Burton Watson attributes to " the close links that traditional Chinese thought posits between art and morality " . Since many of Du Fu 's poems feature morality and history , this practice is particularly important . Another reason , identified by the Chinese historian William Hung , is that Chinese poems are typically concise , omitting context that might be relevant , but which an informed contemporary could be assumed to know . For modern Western readers , " The less accurately we know the time , the place and the circumstances in the background , the more liable we are to imagine it incorrectly , and the result will be that we either misunderstand the poem or fail to understand it altogether " . Stephen Owen suggests a third factor particular to Du Fu , arguing that the variety of the poet 's work required consideration of his whole life , rather than the " reductive " categorizations used for more limited poets .