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BULLETIN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF CHINESE LITERATURE NATIONAL CHENGCHI UNIVERSITY NO.35
Publication date： 2021-06
Special Article A New Interpretation of Yu Yue’s “Somniloquies in Sickness
This paper is a Chinese translation of the first two parts of Chen Shih-hsiang’s English translation of Essay on Literature (Wen Fu). The original title of Chen’s paper is “Literature as Light against Darkness,” published in the National Peking University Semi-centennial Papers no. 11 (1948). It consists of three parts: The first part includes a biography of Lu Ji and research on the time when Essay on Literature was written. The second part offers understanding and interpretation of several key concepts in Essay on Literature. The third part is a complete translation of Essay on Literature in rhymed English. Chen believed that Essay on Literature was written in the first year of Yongkang under the reign of emperor Hui, Western Jin (300 CE), during the darkest days of Lu Ji’s life. The literary calling was very compelling and there was an explosion of creativity. Lu Ji’syounger brother Lu Yun commented: “My brother, you wrote so many essays and they are so unorthodox, almost to the degree that they frighten people, so that they are no longer mere essays.” Essay on Literature illustrates Lu Ji’s views on literature: literature is like a light source in darkness. It possesses transcendental power, and can highlight human resilience and sooth mind and soul. Chen understood Essay on Literature as elaborating on Lu Ji’s insights into literary principles, which were comparable with the concerns of western modern literary theories. Consequently, he selected several key concepts to analyze and interpret, to reveal the significance of Essay on Literature for both literary tradition and modernity.
Since the emergence of the first Chinese Literary History by Lin Chuanjia,Dou Jingfan or Huang Jia in the late Qing dynasty, there have been more than one thousand modern Chinese Literary History published over the past hundred years or so. However, due to lack of knowledge on essentialism, epistemology, perspectives on literary history and methodology, many of these works plagiarized among one another, resulting in most of them being in poor quality. The two mainstream trends of “perspectives on literary history” among these are especially biased and absurd: one is deeply influenced by western biological and sociological “evolution” theories in pursuit of modernization and literary revolution, consequently “evolutionary perspective on literary history” becomes very popular. The other is dominated by dogmatic Marx-Leninism and political ideology, and promotes the rigid theoretical framework of “materialistic perspective on literary history.”These two perspectives are grafted from outside, therefore have no connection with the origin and development of ancient Chinese literature. Their interpretive validity has been questioned and criticized repeatedly since the “literary theory”boom in the 1990s. However, so far, the academic world only manages to deconstruct without being able to reconstruct. A systematic and rigorous “interpretive model” for original ancient Chinese perspectives on literary history has yet to be established to form the theoretical basis for writing “Chinese literary history.”This paper, therefore, focuses on the original ancient Chinese “normal and mutated perspectives on literary history.” Through understanding, interpreting, analyzing, assembling relevant texts, it reveals and reorganizes hidden, scattered ideas, so as to “reconstruct” them into two systematic and rigorous “interpretive models” as standards for theories on “literary history.” They are “circular movements from the normal to the mutated and back” and “changing with time and returning to the origin.” These two interpretive models about the normal and the mutated perspectives on literary history can guide the writing of modern Chinese Literary History and also explain the transformation from the normal to the mutated and back for various genres over the ages.
Theme Thesis Old Tradition and New Thought: from Comments on Prose and Poetry (Shiwen Ping) to Literary Criticism
The changing of Comments on Prose and Poetry into Literary Criticism marks the modern transformation of traditional Chinese scholarship. It is the course of double construction academically and psychologically. Facing the affect of western learning, literature is the last and only evidence of national self-confidence in late Qing Dynasty. With the declaration of the death of traditional Chinese literature, and of creation of new Chinese literature announced by the New Literateurs, the tide of introducing Western literature began. Western literary criticism was also introduced, because the guide from western literary criticism was thought to be needed for construction of new literature. The traditional Chinese comments on prose and poetry had been reviewed and reconstructed through principals and frameworks of western literary criticism, came to be the modern academy. The key question is how to handle the relationship between western academy and Chinese tradition in this course. Both its successes and failures are valuable for today and future.
This paper is a reflection on recent studies about the reasons behind the emergence of leaders of traditional Chinese scholar-literati circles. Using Zhu Yizun, leader of the Jiangzhe local scholar-literati circle, as an example, it illustrates the connection between the formation of the leadership position and the “hermit image” bestowed upon Zhu Yizun. Social factors previously ignored are proposed as alternatives to, but not replacement of prior explanations. On the other hand, this case study highlights the functions that “social image” of the leader of a local scholar-literati circle could serve in promoting social unity. This is an aspect worth noting in considering the social effect of literature. The “hermit image” was conf 99 erred upon Zhu Yizun, as could especially be seen in inscriptions by others on Zhu’s portraits. This image was steeped in “anchoring oneself in the world” and “returning to one’s root,” and through expressions of “retiring and returning to one’s home country” and “sharing memories of our group at the present”, differed significantly from traditional images of hermits.
The study of the oracle bone inscriptions is the basis of the study of ancient characters, ancient history and cultural anthropology in the Shang Dynasty and even the Western Zhou Dynasty. The mastery of the meaning of oracle bone inscriptions helps us to the understand ancient knowledge as a whole. In this article, we discuss and analyze six topics of “‘Duo Wan Ru Xue’ and Xia Xiaozheng (Small Calendar of the Xia Dynasty),” “Interpretation of the word ‘huang’indicating disease,” “Interpretation of the word ‘zhe’ in the inscriptions on human skulls,” “Identification and consideration of the word ‘ji’,” “Argument on the word as ‘fox’” and “Research of the word ‘chi’ (tooth).” Some materials related with these topics have been personally examined by the author. Although each topic is discussed in association with the phenomena of oracle inscriptions, due to the special nature, it can also be developed into an independent topic with its own academic significance.
The character “ ” was often written with the “止” radical in “wangbin” inscriptions, i.e., “ ,” while it was written as “ ” in the “binzu” inscription group, and “ ” in the “dianbin” inscription group. However, they all had two inter-related meanings of “to go” and “to come,” which should be the original meanings of “bin” (賓). The character “bin” was initially created to indicate that the kings of the Shang dynasty “went” to sacrificial sites. However, it also meant that the kings “came” to sacrificial sites in other inscriptions. The specific meaning was determined based on the diviners’ locations. We can also compare the meanings of “bin” with the meanings of “ji” in “jizong” inscriptions and find that they were similar. The meaning of the character “bin” as a motion verb in oracle bone scripts came down in history despite the “chasm” in the bronze inscriptions of the Western Zhou period. The character “bin” that appeared on Chu Bamboo Slips and on inscriptions on ancient bronze objects carried the original meaning. We therefore reexamine the meanings of the many “bin”s in ancient texts.
This paper reexamines Wang Bi’s theory of “naturalization of feeling” by reviewing his work Explication of Doubts on the Analects, to clarify questions arising from contemporary interpretation of the theory, and to provide different points of view on how to understanding the theory. The discussion is divided into two sections in this paper. The first section discusses how Wang carried on previous studies of “naturalization of feeling” and its connotation from three perspectives. First, the traditional Taoist approaches to “naturalization of feeling” are sorted out and compared with Wang’s position, to highlight the differences and similarities between the two conceptual thoughts. And the examination of other works and commentaries by Wang reveals how “disposition” and “feeling” are interrelated in Wang’s system of thought. The consistency between Wang’s theory of “naturalization of feeling” and his other theories further indicates that, in Wang’s view, the tendencies of “disposition” and “feeling” are both neutral, “disposition” is not an exact equivalence to “nature,” neither is “feeling” governed by “disposition.” In the second section, this paper focuses on the conceptual continuation and interpretative turn of Wang’s theory of “naturalization of feeling.” By studying how Wang interpreted “by nature, men are nearly alike” in Confucian thought with the theory of “naturalization of feeling,” this paper illustrates the differences and similarities between the two approaches of interpreting “disposition” and “feeling.” Furthermore, it compares the Confucian and Taoist interpretations of the disposition of morality to demonstrate the philosophical difference between the Confucian and Wang’s views on “disposition.” Finally, by comparing Wang and Yi-Chuan’s theories of “naturalization of feeling,” this paper further demonstrates how contemporary interpretation of Wang’s theory has been affected by the meta-analysis of Sung-Ming Confucianism.
By selecting and publishing many books, Mao Jin (1599-1659) has been widely known as a publisher in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Among the books he published, Mingseng Hongxiuji is an anthology of poetry aiming particularly at collecting monks’ poems. Since Mao Jin published it just before the Ming-Qing transition and targeted monks’ poems, this anthology is appropriate for the investigation of Mao Jin’s identity as a layperson and his attitude toward Buddhism at that time. By examining Mao Jin’s publishing history and catalogues, this article firstly points out that Mingseng Hongxiuji was one of the series of books, Ming Sixiu Ji, which originally consisted of Guoxiu, Hongxiu, Yinxiu and Guixiu. It provides the historical evidence for us to analyze the publisher’s planning of the anthology with the intention to collect poems on special topics. Secondly, after re-examining Mao Jin’s roles in printing and publishing the Jiaxing Tripitaka as well as anthologies of other monks’ poems, we can say that his faith in Buddhism and interests in gathering ancient texts are mutually complementary. Thirdly, there are many brief biographies of monks and their works in Mingseng Hongxiuji from the late Yuan dynasty, which offers us a clue to investigate Mao Jin’s empathy with the people suffering during the tumultuous late Yuan period. In summary, this article intends to explain how Mao Jin made connections with Buddhist monks and believers through his compiling and publishing efforts during the Ming-Qing transition. Mao Jin, monks’ poems, loyalists’ poems, Yuan poetry, late Ming and early Qing.
