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Full-Text Articles in Chinese Studies
Yuefu Poetry : Political Satire Or Coquetry? An Ambiguous Song, Jui-Lung Su
Yuefu Poetry : Political Satire Or Coquetry? An Ambiguous Song, Jui-Lung Su
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
This episode discusses the two opposing interpretations of the poem entitled, “Mulberry Along the Lane,” one of the best-known yuefu songs in classical Chinese literature. Traditionally this poem has been interpreted as a representation of social injustice, depicting the situation of an official harassing a peasant girl. The other perspective is the poem is simply a verbal flirtation between a man and a woman and a popular song about a clever lady who employs an engaging and inoffensive way to turn down her suitor.
Yuefu Poetry : A Bad Breakup In The Han Yuefu, Jui-Lung Su
Yuefu Poetry : A Bad Breakup In The Han Yuefu, Jui-Lung Su
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
This episode analyzes this yuefu piece from different perspectives. As many of the popular songs of the Han, this poem contains dialogue and monologue at the same time. The poem follows a daring woman’s emotional changes from her initial rage against her lover from the south who jilted her to an unsettling feeling of anxiety.
Yuefu Poetry : War As A Theme In Early Popular Chinese Poetry, Jui-Lung Su
Yuefu Poetry : War As A Theme In Early Popular Chinese Poetry, Jui-Lung Su
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
This episode first discusses the functions of the Han Music Bureau and the yuefu poetry as a poetic genre. It points out the fact that we still don’t know if the Bureau really collected these songs from various regions and matched them with music. Many of the popular poems we now call “Han yuefu” are actually preserved in the History of the Liu Song Dynasty written in the sixth century. The second part focuses on analyzing the yuefu poem entitled, “We Fought South of the Walls” from different angles.
Lisao : The Poem And Its Author As A Composite Text : The Lisao As A Composite Intertext, Martin Kern
Lisao : The Poem And Its Author As A Composite Text : The Lisao As A Composite Intertext, Martin Kern
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
This episode offers a detailed discussion of the structure and diction of the Lisao and describes the text not as a single poem but as a composite text created from different poetic registers, and different voices, that are otherwise known from the poems of Jiu ge, Jiu zhang, and Tian wen.
Lisao : The Poem And Its Author As A Composite Text : The Fusion Of Poetry And Biography, Martin Kern
Lisao : The Poem And Its Author As A Composite Text : The Fusion Of Poetry And Biography, Martin Kern
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
This episode discusses how Qu Yuan’s poetry and biography flow seamlessly into each other, and how the figures of poetic hero and heroic poet repeatedly switched places. Likewise, later transmitters, commentators, and poets could appropriate Qu Yuan’s voice with ease.
Lisao : The Poem And Its Author As A Composite Text : The Meaning Of Qu Yuan In The Western Han, Martin Kern
Lisao : The Poem And Its Author As A Composite Text : The Meaning Of Qu Yuan In The Western Han, Martin Kern
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
This episode discusses what the Qu Yuan persona meant to Han dynasty intellectuals. Why was Qu Yuan important to Han thinkers in literary, political, and historical, terms? What did they find in the Qu Yuan persona? How did they identify with that persona of their imagination?
The Lyrics Of Chu : Qu Yuan And His Poetic Allegories : Spiritual And Imaginary Journeys In Lisao Or “On Encountering Trouble”, Fusheng Wu
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
This episode continues our previous discussion of the Li sao or On Encountering Trouble. It focuses on two failed spiritual/supernatural trips or flights in search of Qu Yuan’s ideal and his final decision to commit suicide as the result of his disillusionment with his ruler and society.
The Lyrics Of Chu : Qu Yuan And His Poetic Allegories : The Poetic Persona In Lisao Or “On Encountering Trouble”, Fusheng Wu
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
This episode discusses Li sao or On Encountring Trouble,” the crowning achievement in the Chu ci repertoire. This poem evolves around the life of Qu Yuan, a poetic persona who is the alleged author of the poem. In the first part of the poem, Qu Yuan talks at length about his glorious family history and his own self-cultivation.
The Lyrics Of Chu : Qu Yuan And His Poetic Allegories : A General Introduction To Chuci, Fusheng Wu
The Lyrics Of Chu : Qu Yuan And His Poetic Allegories : A General Introduction To Chuci, Fusheng Wu
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
This episode provides a brief general introduction to Chuci; it also discusses a poem in this repertoire, Xian jun(“The Lord of the Xiang River), and its influence on Li sao (“On Encountering Trouble”) that will be discussed in the next two episodes.
The Book Of Poetry : The Han Canonization : Dead Deer Meat As A Gift, Zong-Qi Cai
The Book Of Poetry : The Han Canonization : Dead Deer Meat As A Gift, Zong-Qi Cai
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
This episode looks at the concerted effort by three prominent Han commentators to allegorize a poem made up of disjointed or rather conflicting parts. It also reflects on the ironic fact that Han commentators’ allegorizing process itself constitutes a beautiful exercise of literary imagination, foreshadowing the fruitful exploitation of semantic, syntactic, and structural ambiguities by Du Fu, Li Shangyin, and other Tang poets.
The Book Of Poetry : The Han Canonization : Romeo And Juliet-Like Rendezvous, Zong-Qi Cai
The Book Of Poetry : The Han Canonization : Romeo And Juliet-Like Rendezvous, Zong-Qi Cai
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
This episode features a poem that enacts, through incremental repetition, the unfolding drama of a young woman being torn by longing, hesitancy, love, and fear while a suitor is crushing all physical barriers to have a tryst with her. To sanitize this poem, Han commentators resorted to an allegorizing strategy called “cutting off a section to create a new meaning,” constructing a political allegory on the thinnest of evidence.
The Book Of Poetry : The Han Canonization : A Love Song And A Moral Exemplum, Zong-Qi Cai
The Book Of Poetry : The Han Canonization : A Love Song And A Moral Exemplum, Zong-Qi Cai
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
This episode discusses how the anonymous author of “Prefaces to the Book of Poetry” turned “Osprey,” the first of the 305 Shijing poems, from a lively love song into a moral exempla by means of gender switching. It also explains that such imaginative gender switching was made possible by classical Chinese grammar, especially its ungendered use of pronouns and its frequent omission of sentence subjects.
The Book Of Poetry And Diplomacy : What Does It Mean To Say, “I Love You”?, Wai-Yee Li
The Book Of Poetry And Diplomacy : What Does It Mean To Say, “I Love You”?, Wai-Yee Li
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
This episode discusses how the language of love and kinship is used in diplomatic negotiations through the recitation of odes. For example, aLu minister uses a wedding song to compare smaller states to a bride welcomed by her groom (the powerful Jin). A woman picking artemisia with care becomes the analogue for a powerful state cherishing a weak one. A Zheng minister uses an ode about seduction to forestall or resist aggression. A Jin leader affirms an alliance through an ode celebrating brotherhood.
The Book Of Poetry And Diplomacy : Who Is The Boss?, Wai-Yee Li
The Book Of Poetry And Diplomacy : Who Is The Boss?, Wai-Yee Li
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
This episode uses two scenes of reciting odes to explore the struggle for hegemony. The first shows how a fugitive Jin Prince declare his ambition despite his precarious and dependent position. The second features a Jin leader pushing back against the hubristic self-aggrandizement of a Chu prince.
The Book Of Poetry And Diplomacy : Who Is The Barbarian?, Wai-Yee Li
The Book Of Poetry And Diplomacy : Who Is The Barbarian?, Wai-Yee Li
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
This episode discusses how a “barbarian” chief gains diplomatic advantages by reciting an ode now included in Shijing. The recitation both asserts and effaces differences between “Chinese” and “barbarian” states. It seeks to redefine the past and argues for equality and amity between Jin and the Rong.
The Book Of Poetry : Zhou Dynastic Building, William H. Nienhauser
The Book Of Poetry : Zhou Dynastic Building, William H. Nienhauser
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
“Woven” like many of the Da ya (Greater Odes) sings of two of the heroes who laid the groundwork for their grandson and son to overcome the Shang and establish the Zhou dynasty. The text lends itself to memorization and may have been part of early court ritual as our own Star-Spangled Banner celebrates an event in the early history of our country.
The Book Of Poetry : Courtship Poems, William H. Nienhauser
The Book Of Poetry : Courtship Poems, William H. Nienhauser
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
The three courtship forms, “I Beg of you, Zhong Zi,” “The Banks of the Ru,” and “The Retiring Girl,” present contrasting depictions of the courtship process in early China. In the first, a village encounter between two lovers or potential lovers is depicted. The man and the woman in “The Banks of the Ru” may be married or simply lovers, but the link to the previous poem is the concern about the girl’s parents. This is the most clearly erotic of the poems presented. “The Retiring Girl” depicts a couple in a relationship with the young woman still reticent to …
The Book Of Poetry : Marriage Poems, William H. Nienhauser
The Book Of Poetry : Marriage Poems, William H. Nienhauser
How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast
Many of the 160 guofeng or airs of the states are poems depicting lovers both true to their partners and false. “On the mountain is the thorn elm” seems to depict a relationship gone bad. It is followed by one of the most famous marriage poems, “The Peach Tree Tender,” in which a village singer outside the family praises the selection of a new bride.