Comparative Phonorhetorical Analyses of Speeches in the Zuo Commentary and the Discourses of the StatesTharsen, Jeffrey R.
2019 Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture
doi: 10.1215/23290048-8041931
Research methods employing large-scale databases of digital texts and digital lexica can assist in the detection of the ways phonetic patterns worked in concert with semantic and syntactic structures in premodern Chinese narrative texts. When applied to the speeches by eminent ministers preserved in the Zuo Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals and the Discourses of the States, close examinations of the tripartite framework of sound, meaning, and structure allow a deeper understanding of the phonorhetorical techniques employed by their composers (and/or transmitters), emphasizing key terms and imparting subtle feelings of grandeur and harmony. In comparative context, analyses of stylistic elements at scale provide insights into the rhetorical choices made by different authors in formative periods of Chinese literature, choices that informed and influenced future writers and scholars for millennia thereafter.
Genre Conflation and Fictional Religiosity in Guilian meng (Returning to the Lotus Dream)Li, Mengjun
2019 Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture
doi: 10.1215/23290048-8041944
The early Qing (1644–1911) midlength vernacular novel Guilian meng 歸蓮夢 (Returning to the Lotus Dream, hereafter Lotus Dream), attributed to Su'an zhuren 蘇庵主人 (Master of Su'an, hereafter Su'an), features a triple hybrid narrative: a hagiographic account of the female protagonist's path to Buddhist enlightenment, a scholar-beauty romance, and a heroic military adventure. Although Su'an (himself a lay Buddhist) claims to preach Buddhist teachings through the novel, the text does not represent the exclusive voice of a single religion or belief system. Instead, its hybrid narrative allows Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and the teachings of other popular sects to interact, intertwine, and compete. This essay argues that the novel's narrative amalgamation is a result of the author's conscious adherence to established genre conventions and market tastes, while it quietly subsumes other religious beliefs into its own Buddhism. In its own way, the novel reflects the larger trend of syncretism, found in literary and religious practices alike in the seventeenth century. As such, Lotus Dream offers us a good example of “fictional religiosity,” encompassing both the religious elements scattered throughout vernacular novels and these novels' growing cultural authority. The religiosity of fiction is best understood in light of the notion of xiaoshuo jiao 小說教 (cult/teachings of fiction), denoting the genre's quasi-religious power of persuasion. Lotus Dream thus serves as an excellent starting point for a reconsideration of the spiritual authority that vernacular novels exercised in the Qing dynasty.
Identities and Literary Culture in Qing China: Manchu Emperors as Chinese Poets, Readers, and PublishersChow, Kai-Wing
2019 Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture
doi: 10.1215/23290048-8041957
The Qianlong emperor bequeathed the largest number of Chinese poems of any emperor, and perhaps of any poet, in the history of imperial China. But how do we make sense of the fact that Qianlong had been adamant in maintaining and preserving what he considered the essence of Manchu culture: the Manchu language and hunting skills? This articles argues that, despite deliberate staging through various fashions of his image as the ruler of a multiethnic empire, Qianlong failed in sending his message to his diverse subjects because, truly enthralled by Chinese poetry, he could not restrain himself from writing poetry in Chinese. In light of the theory of multiple identities and acculturation of John Berry, it is reasonable to argue that Qianlong, despite his unambiguous identification with the Manchus as the conquering ethnic group, in tortuous ways had come to embrace the identity of a Chinese poet of the host society, in which the technologies of culture to a large degree overdetermine the form of identities and how they can be articulated, internalized, embodied, and staged.
Playing against Type: The Moral Merchant on the Early Qing StageFox, Ariel
2019 Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture
doi: 10.1215/23290048-8041977
This article explores the changing depiction of the merchant and the mercantile in the early Qing. A figure of much anxiety and mistrust in the late imperial imagination, the traveling merchant moves things out of their proper place—through both his movement of goods across space and his own mobility across social strata. In the early Qing play Shiwu guan 十五貫 (Fifteen Strings of Cash), however, the merchant's facilitation of the circulation of money and man does not trouble the social whole as much as constitute it. The merchant-hero breaks through narrative and economic impasses, directing capital away from the dead ends of hoarding and incest and toward the creation of productive marriages. In recuperating the merchant as a moral subject and his circulation of money as a moral act, Shiwu guan offers new possibilities for the construction of selfhood both onstage and off.
Sending Flowers into the Mirror: Jinghua yuan as MetafictionGe, Liangyan
2019 Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture
doi: 10.1215/23290048-8041990
This study offers a reading of the early nineteenth-century Chinese novel Jinghua yuan 鏡花緣 (Flowers in the Mirror) by Li Ruzhen 李汝珍 (1763–1830?) as a fiction about fiction making. Contextualizing the novel in a society where the civil service examinations are among the most important cultural institutions, this article considers the protagonist Tang Ao's 唐敖 voyage to bizarre, fantastical islands, narrated in the early chapters of the novel, as an account of his conversion from examination scholarship to fiction creation. From these islands, his symbolic realm of fictionality, he sends flower spirits-turned-girls to China for the female examinations, here interpreted as an enterprise to fictionalize the examination system. Thus the narrative of the girls' participation in the exams and ensuing celebrations in later chapters becomes a fiction within the fiction. Discussing the dynamic between the examinations and fiction writing elevated in the metafictional structure of the novel, this study considers Tang Ao a fictional representative of many scholars in late imperial China, whose experience with the examinations was not merely a cause of intense frustration but also an inexhaustible source of literary inspiration.
The Ancient Chinese Arts of the Ear: Etymology, Meteorology, MusicologyXiaodun, Wang;Schoenberger, Casey
2019 Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture
doi: 10.1215/23290048-8042003
This article draws on historical linguistic evidence, archeological finds, and written accounts of ancient practices to argue that, in the pre-Qin and Han periods of Chinese history, an important stratum of knowledge related to earthly energies, vibrations, pitch, tonality, music, memory, and recitation existed in conceptual parallel to systems of visual knowledge of heavenly bodies, light, color, and the written record. Masters of the former set of skills were frequently blind and entrusted with a distinct set of ritual and advisory functions, including ushering in the seasons, pronouncing on elements of the calendar, predicting military fortunes, and performing official policy admonishments. Of particular importance to this group of experts was the concept of “winds” or “airs” (fēng) and a closely related verb for “sing,” “chant,” or “remonstrate” (fĕng). The etymological relationship of these words, along with words for listening, smell, sounds, and fragrance, led to a conceptual blending whereby the “energy” (qi) of wise words and “fragrant” virtue could carry on “winds” of oral transmission to correct public morality and governance. This led to an etiological hierarchy, in some ways inverted by current standards, in which the purpose of studying pitch and tonality was not, first and foremost, analysis of music qua art but, rather, the encoding, transmission, and influence of natural energies and social harmony.
Tao Yuanming in Recently Unearthed Epitaphs from the Sui and TangKexian, Hu;Zhang, Yuan
2019 Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture
doi: 10.1215/23290048-8042016
A recently discovered collection of epitaphs (muzhi 墓誌) reveals copious references to Tao Yuanming (Tao Qian 陶潛, 365–427), a writer of pervasive influence on Chinese culture. In recent decades, both English and Chinese scholarship has focused on Tao's literary and historical reception, with little attention paid to his representation in epitaph writing. This article, through an examination of these newly unearthed documents, presents forty-seven epitaph fragments with direct mention of Tao's name. Most were written in the Tang dynasty, when Tao was ardently appreciated as a poet, and his literary vocabulary was widely borrowed and imitated. However, a close reading of epitaphs illustrates that Tao's image as a moral exemplar was perhaps even more prominent than his role as esteemed poet. He was invoked to suggest the comparable personal traits of the tomb owner (muzhu 墓主), his name frequently juxtaposed with various historical figures renowned for their virtue. His name is also used as an adjective to modify carefully selected images to further characterize him as a moral exemplar. In Tang epitaphs, moral concerns together with philosophical contemplation on the motives of reclusion play a significant role, laying the foundation for the complexity of Tao's image in the Song period. Current research seeks to increase our understanding of the process behind the construction of Tao as a cultural icon.