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Return to an Inner Utopia 119 Chapter 4 Return to an Inner Utopia In what was to become a celebrated act in Chinese literary history, Su Shi be- gan systematically composing “matching Tao” (he Tao 和陶) poems in the spring of 1095, during his period of exile in Huizhou. This project of 109 poems was completed when he was further exiled to Danzhou. It was issued in four fascicles, shortly after his return to the mainland in 1100.1 Inspired by and fol- lowing the rhyming patterns of the poetry of Tao Qian, these poems contrib- uted to the making (and remaking) of the images of both poets, as well as a return to simplicity in Chinese lyrical aesthetics.2 Thus far, scholarship has focused on the significance of Su Shi’s agency in Tao Qian’s canonisation. His image was transformed through Su’s criticism and emulation: Tao came to be viewed as a spontaneous Man of the Way and not just an eccentric medieval recluse and hearty drinker.3 In other words, Tao Qian’s ‘spontaneity’ was only created retrospectively in lament over its loss. The unattainability of the ideal is part and parcel of its worth. In this chapter, I will further examine what Su Shi’s practice meant for Su Shi himself. I argue that Su Shi’s active transformation of and identification with Tao Qian’s image were driven by the purpose of overcoming the tyranny of despair, deprivation and mortality. The apparent serenity of the “matching Tao” poems was therefore fundamentally paradoxical, a result of self-persua- sion. -
3Kingdoms014.Pdf
Welcome to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast. This is episode 14. So I’m back after taking the last couple weeks off to do some charity work and some traveling. I am eager to dive back into the story, and I hope you are too. Last time, we left off with Cao Cao getting all “You killed my father. Prepare to die.” Except in this case it was more like, “The guy you sent to protect my father killed my father. Prepare to die.” Either way, Cao Cao was getting ready to lay siege to Xu Province and kill everyone there to avenge his father’s death. The imperial protector of Xu Province, Tao (2) Qian (1), sent out two messengers to seek help from outside sources. One of these messengers, an official named Mi (2) Zhu (2), went to Beihai (2,3) Prefecture to see the governor there, Kong (3) Rong (2). Now this Kong Rong is a relatively minor character in our story, but in real life, he was considered one of the leading scholars of his time. He was a 20th-generation descendant of Kong Zi, or better known to the west as Confucius. So he’s certainly got the pedigree. And he was supposedly something of a wunderkind, and there are a number of stories of how smart he was as a child. For instance, when he was 10, he went to see Li (3) Ying (1), the governor of Henan Prefecture. The guard at the gate wasn’t about to let this random child in to the governor’s residence. -
Welcome to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast. This Is a Supplemental Episode. Alright, So This Is Another Big One, As We
Welcome to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Podcast. This is a supplemental episode. Alright, so this is another big one, as we bid farewell to the novel’s main protagonist, Liu Bei. In the novel, he is portrayed as the ideal Confucian ruler, extolled for his virtue, compassion, kindness, and honor, as well as his eagerness for seeking out men of talent. How much of that is actually true? Well, we’ll see. But bear in mind that even the source material we have about Liu Bei should be considered heavily biased, since the main historical source we have, the Records of the Three Kingdoms, was written by a guy who had served in the court of the kingdom that Liu Bei founded, which no doubt colored his view of the man. Given Liu Bei’s eventual status as the emperor of a kingdom, there were, unsurprisingly, very extensive records about his life and career, and what’s laid out in the novel In terms of the whens, wheres, and whats of Liu Bei’s life pretty much corresponds with real-life events. Because of that, I’m not going to do a straight rehash of his life since that alone would take two full episodes. Seriously, I had to rewrite this episode three times to make it a manageable length, which is why it’s being released a month later than I anticipated. So instead, I’m going to pick and choose from the notable stories about Liu Bei from the novel and talk about which ones were real and which ones were pure fiction. -
The Final Chapter of This Thesis Is a Case Study of the Late Twelfth to Early Thirteenth Century Court Artist Turned Eccentric Painter Liang Kai 梁楷
CHAPTER SIX LIANG KAI: INCARNATIONS OF A MASTER The final chapter of this thesis is a case study of the late twelfth to early thirteenth century court artist turned eccentric painter Liang Kai 梁楷. Following the preceding chapters’ examinations of the agency of narrative themes and clerical inscription in the reception of Chan figure paintings, the ensuing analysis explores the agency of the ideal of the artist. Liang has come to embody two distinctive ideals. One is of Liang as an expressive and eccentric creator of Chan images, depicting wild and heterodox subjects in brush modes that challenged accepted conventions of painting practice. Extant works of this type are, for the most part, preserved in Japanese collections (figs. 6.1-6.2).422 The second Liang Kai is a master of careful and meticulous depiction, who was admired by his court painter contemporaries for his ‘exquisite brush’ (Chinese: jingmei zhi bi 精美之筆).423 The majority of Liang Kai’s attributions that embody this ideal have been preserved through Chinese collections (fig. 6.3).424 This chapter problematises Liang Kai’s dichotomous reception as either an eccentric drunken genius, or a superlative court draughtsman, through the critical examination of his historic reception in both China and Japan. The ensuing discussion will illustrate the construction and augmentation of Liang’s distinctive images in his Chinese and Japanese transmissions, based on analyses of extant works attributed to Liang Kai, and of historic texts on Liang’s artistic practice and oeuvre. This approach aims to reveal the complex overlap and interplay of Liang’s supposedly distinctive cursive and meticulous modes of brushwork. -
Reading Tao Yuanming/Tao Qian: “Twenty Poems About Drinking”
Reading Tao Yuanming/Tao Qian: “Twenty Poems about Drinking” Massimo Verdicchio (University of Alberta) Abstract: Tao Qian’s “Twenty Poems about Drinking” have been read as autobiography, and as being about his life as a recluse and about drinking. In my paper, I analyze the twenty poems as forming one narrative unit, in order to show that the subject of the poems is about poetry, just as much as it is about drinking, and I discuss their implications for a poetics of Tao Qian. Keywords: Tao Qian, Hightower, Ashmore, poetry, wine Robert Ashmore’ study of Tao Qian (365?-427) has been instrumental in putting into perspective the life and work of this great Chinese poet, his indebtedness to the ancient past as well to his historical present, which has made it possible to capture the more subtle implications of his poetry. Most of all, as the title of his book indicates, The Transport of Reading, he has drawn attention to the implications of “reading” as “a mode of transport” not only to better understand Tao Qian but also to determine how reading had an impact on his poetry: “how Tao Qian created a distinctive and origi- nal poetics out of the materials provided to him by traditions about text and reading” (Ashmore 4). His approach is for the most part historical but it provides a useful background to place Tao Qian’s poetry into perspective and to eliminate many of the misconceptions and hypotheses that have been made on his account. In this essay I would like to emphasize another aspect of “reading” on which Ashmore only touches indirectly since it is not his main focus. -
Four Sichuan Buddhist Steles and the Beginnings of Pure Land Imagery in China Author(S): Dorothy C
Four Sichuan Buddhist Steles and the Beginnings of Pure Land Imagery in China Author(s): Dorothy C. Wong Source: Archives of Asian Art, Vol. 51 (1998/1999), pp. 56-79 Published by: University of Hawai'i Press for the Asia Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20111283 . Accessed: 22/11/2013 13:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Hawai'i Press and Asia Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Archives of Asian Art. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.143.172.192 on Fri, 22 Nov 2013 13:42:46 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Four Sichuan Buddhist Steles and the Beginnings of Pure Land Imagery in China Dorothy C.Wong University of Virginia 1 he Northern and Southern Dynasties (386?589) iswell thriving economic and cultural center since Han times, a recognized as period of significant developments in but compared with Nanjing and Luoyang, capital cities Chinese art history. Idioms and artistic conventions estab where ritual art in the service of a state ideology remained lished in Han-dynasty (202 BCE?220 CE) art continued, an imperative, Sichuan always allowed artists a much while the acceptance of Buddhism and Buddhist art forms greater degree of freedom. -
Tao Yuanming's Perspectives on Life As Reflected in His Poems on History
Journal of chinese humanities 6 (2020) 235–258 brill.com/joch Tao Yuanming’s Perspectives on Life as Reflected in His Poems on History Zhang Yue 張月 Associate Professor of Department of Chinese Language and Literature, University of Macau, Taipa, Macau, China [email protected] Abstract Studies on Tao Yuanming have often focused on his personality, reclusive life, and pas- toral poetry. However, Tao’s extant oeuvre includes a large number of poems on history. This article aims to complement current scholarship by exploring his viewpoints on life through a close reading of his poems on history. His poems on history are a key to Tao’s perspectives with regard to the factors that decide a successful political career, the best way to cope with difficulties and frustrations, and the situations in which literati should withdraw from public life. Examining his positions reveals the connec- tions between these different aspects. These poems express Tao’s perspectives on life, as informed by his historical predecessors and philosophical beliefs, and as developed through his own life experience and efforts at poetic composition. Keywords Tao Yuanming – poems on history – perspectives on life Tao Yuanming 陶淵明 [ca. 365–427], a native of Xunyang 潯陽 (contem- porary Jiujiang 九江, Jiangxi), is one of the best-known and most-studied Chinese poets from before the Tang [618–907]. His extant corpus, comprising 125 poems and 12 prose works, is one of the few complete collections to survive from early medieval China, largely thanks to Xiao Tong 蕭統 [501–531], a prince of the Liang dynasty [502–557], who collected Tao’s works, wrote a preface, and © ZHANG YUE, 2021 | doi:10.1163/23521341-12340102 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0Downloaded license. -
Seeing with the Mind's Eye: the Eastern Jin Discourse of Visualization and Imagination Author(S): TIAN XIAOFEI Source: Asia Major , 2005, THIRD SERIES, Vol
Seeing with the Mind's Eye: The Eastern Jin Discourse of Visualization and Imagination Author(s): TIAN XIAOFEI Source: Asia Major , 2005, THIRD SERIES, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2005), pp. 67-102 Published by: Academia Sinica Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/41649906 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Academia Sinica is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Asia Major This content downloaded from 206.253.207.235 on Mon, 13 Jul 2020 17:58:56 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms TIAN XIAOFEI Seeing with the Mind's Eye: The Eastern Jin Discourse of Visualization and Imagination This with with paper the thephysical physical world, explores or more world, specifically, a series with or more landscape, of acts dur- specifically, of the mind with in landscape, its interaction dur- ing the intellectually coherent hundred-year period coinciding with the dynasty known as the Eastern Jin (317-420). Chinese landscape poetry and landscape paintings first flourished in the Six Dynasties. Landscape was an essential element in the so-called "poetry of arcane discourse" ( xuanyan shi 3CHHÍ) of the fourth century, a poetry drawing heavily upon the vocabulary and concerns of the Daoist philosophy embodied in Laozi and ZJiuangzi as well as upon Buddhist doctrine; the earliest known record of landscape painting also dates to the Eastern Jin.1 How was landscape perceived by the Eastern Jin elite, and how was this unique mode of perception informed by a complex nexus of contemporary cultural forces? These are the questions to be dealt with in this paper. -
Pure Mind, Pure Land a Brief Study of Modern Chinese Pure Land Thought and Movements
Pure Mind, Pure Land A Brief Study of Modern Chinese Pure Land Thought and Movements Wei, Tao Master of Arts Faculty ofReligious Studies McGill University Montreal, Quebec, Canada July 26, 2007 In Partial Fulfillment ofthe Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Faculty ofReligious Studies of Mc Gill University ©Tao Wei Copyright 2007 All rights reserved. Library and Bibliothèque et 1+1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Bran ch Patrimoine de l'édition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada Your file Votre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-51412-2 Our file Notre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-51412-2 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant à la Bibliothèque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par télécommunication ou par l'Internet, prêter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des thèses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, à des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non sur support microforme, papier, électronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriété du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protège cette thèse. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. -
Evolving Relationship Between the Buddhist Monastic Order and the Imperial States of Medieval China Mario Poceski*
40 Evolving Relationship between the Buddhist Monastic Order and the Imperial States of Medieval China Mario Poceski* The article explores central aspects of the relationship between the Buddhist monastic or- der and the various imperial states that ruled China during the medieval period (roughly between the third and the tenth centuries CE). It focuses especially on the points of tension created by the monastic order’s efforts to establish a sense of autonomy and receive special economic, political, or social exemptions on one hand, and the royal imperium’s assertion of absolute authority over all subjects on the other hand. While the monastic order’s efforts to safeguard its independence and ward off the encroachment of a totalitarian state was largely a losing proposition, in a protracted process that involved complex socio-political negoti- ations and shifting religious realignments, the Buddhist clergy was able to secure impor- tant exemptions from the Chinese rulers’ demands. Most notably, these included exemptions from certain forms of taxation, military conscription, and forced labour, which helped secure the economic foundations of monastic life and enhance the prominent place of Buddhism in Chinese society. To illustrate these issues, the article explores some of the key debates that pitted prominent Buddhist monastics such as Huiyuan (334-416) against key segments of the Chinese socio-political elites, many of whom were influenced by a Confucian ideology that was often inimical to monastic institutions. Keywords: medieval China; Buddhism; Huiyuan; monastic order Introduction Within the broad context of East Asian history, among the most important large scale events that unfolded during the early centuries of the Common Era was the introduction and spread of Buddhism into China. -
Lecture Notes, by James Cahill
Lecture Notes, by James Cahill Note: The image numbers in these lecture notes do not exactly coincide with the images onscreen but are meant to be reference points in the lectures’ progression. Lecture 9B: Political and Poetic Themes in Southern Song Painting As we move into a period from which more reliable work survives, we can begin to address big concerns such as political themes in court painting, and poetic painting. The latter, poetic painting, means different things to different people; I myself gave a series of lectures that turned into a book titled The Lyric Journey: Poetic Painting in China and Japan (Harvard University Press, 1996). As I acknowledge in that book, there are a number of ways one can define poetic painting in China; I certainly donʹt claim that mine is the only right one, or even that itʹs the best way. In a broad sense, a lot of Southern Song Academy and academy‐style painting can be called poetic, either because it was done in response to couplets and quatrains of poetry presented to the artists by the emperor or others in the court, or simply because they knew that their imperial patrons preferred paintings that could be called poetic. I will develop that theme more as we move further into Southern Song painting; but I want to keep it always problematic, not a quality that one can define clearly or identify easily in paintings. Political Themes and Dynastic Restoration 9.13.1: The Virtuous Brothers Po‐I and Shu‐chʹi in the Wilderness Picking Herbs, early copy after Li Tang, handscroll, Palace Museum, Beijing. -
The Chinese Traditional Acceptance of Information from the View of Contemporary Communication Theory
The Chinese Traditional Acceptance of Information from the View of Contemporary Communication Theory Shao Peiren Fellow of Academic Committee of Zhejiang University, Deputy Director for the Faculty of Humanities, Zhejiang University, Director for Institute of Communication Studies, Zhejiang University, and PhD. candidate supervisor. Communication School of Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310028 Telephone :(86) 0571-8827-3032 Email: [email protected] Abstract Language is proper to mankind, the externalization of human kindness. Because of it what an audience accepts is his self-portrait, we can analyze and get to know the state, rules and characteristics of Chinese ancient audience thorough traditional information acceptance concept and the interpretation. We can get that “Guan”, “Wei” and “Wen” is special Chinese acceptance concept by the ways of basing on the textual research, discrimination and organization of various concepts of acceptance of information at one end and analyzing and reasoning of relevant information and contemporary research achievements at the other end. The emotions of these three concepts reflect the ancient Chinese unique acceptance state and the quintessence of the dated brightness comes through them. This paper also shows five chief notes: (1), piety and seriousness; (2) chewing and repetition; (3) subtila and depth; (4) hierarchy and progress; (5) contact and peep. “It is language that makes human being what he is. He who can not use a language can not be regarded as a true man”. Language, original and peculiar to human, is the element and the code of information dissemination; is the hallmark and characteristic of mankind. And at the same time it is a psychological weapon used by men in knowing the world, reflecting the world and in remoulding the world.