Nearly every history of literary criticism has regarded Shen Deqian’s 沈德潛 theory of gediao 格調 as a supplement to Wang Shizhen’s 王士慎 theory of shenyun 神韻 and a rival to Yuan Mei’s 袁枚 theory of xingling 性靈. The profundity of Shen’s poetics was oversimplified by such traditional viewpoints. In fact, Shen was in dialogue with other poetic theorists of gediao, such as Li Dongyang 李東陽 and the Ming Neo-Classical School, as ear1y as the MidMing, and made breakthroughs on this front. Shen not only emphasized gediao as his main theory; he also tried to communicate with shenyun and xingling. For his creative transformation of gediao, shenyun and xingling, he should be recognized as a poetic master of the Qing dynasty.