The Appropriation of Tang Poetry in Later Chinese Painting

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

The Appropriation of Tang Poetry in Later Chinese Painting

The Andrew L. Markus Memorial Lecture Andrew Lawrence Markus taught Japanese language and literature at the University of Washington from 1986 to the time of his death in 1995. Established through the generosity of family and friends, this annual lecture honors Professor Markus’s contributions to the study of Asian languages and literature. The Appropriation of Tang Poetry in Later Chinese Painting Ronald Egan is currently Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages Tuesday, May 8th, 2018, 6:30pm and Cultures at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in Chinese lit- Kane Hall Room 225 erature from Harvard University. His research focuses on Chinese literature, Walker-Ames Room aesthetics, and cultural history of the Tang-Song period, as well as on text and image studies (poetry and paint- We know that the practice of inscribing poems on paintings was widespread ing) of the later imperial period. His in Chinese painting of the Ming and Qing dynasties. A special and often publications include books on the liter- overlooked instance of that practice was the inscription of poems from ary works and lives of Ouyang Xiu and Su Shi, the latter entitled Word, Image, centuries earlier as part of the newly completed painting (poetry from the and Deed in the Life of Su Shi. He has Tang period was the favorite choice). Such inscription holds particular also published a general study of Song interest for what it shows about the intersection of verbal and pictorial arts as dynasty aesthetic thought, entitled The Problem of Beauty: Aesthetic Thought and well as the aesthetic interplay of past and present. What sorts of effects were Pursuits in Northern Song Dynasty Chi- the artists who inscribed ancient poems on their paintings trying to achieve? na. He is the translator of selected es- Although sometimes what they do seems merely gratuitous, other times their says in Qian Zhongshu’s Guanzui bian, act of adding an earlier poem to their work gives it new layers of meaning which appeared as Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters by Qian Zhongshu. or aesthetic effect that the painted images alone could never convey. It may His most recent book is a study of the even alter the way we perceive the earlier poem, turning it in a new direction works and reception history of Li Qin- that the poet and earlier readers could not have imagined. The existence gzhao, entitled The Burden of Female today of digitalized databases of poetry allows us to identify ancient poems Talent: The Poet Li Qingzhao and Her History in China (Harvard Universi- that the painter may have deliberately left unidentified, and thus opens the ty Press, 2013; Chinese translation by possibility of new insight into this often arcane artistic practice. This talk Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing examines the many ways that ancient poems interact with the paintings House, 2017). He is a past president of the American Oriental Society. to which they were added in Ming-Qing times by the artists themselves. To request disability accommodations, contact the Office of the ADA Coordinator at least ten days in advance of the event: (206) 543-6450, (206)543-6452 TTD, (206) 685-3885 fax, [email protected].

Copy Link

Recommended publications

Dissertation Section 1
Elegies for Empire The Poetics of Memory in the Late Work of Du Fu (712-770) Gregory M. Patterson Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2013 ! 2013 Gregory M. Patterson All rights reserved ABSTRACT Elegies for Empire: The Poetics of Memory in the Late Work of Du Fu (712-770) Gregory M. Patterson This dissertation explores highly influential constructions of the past at a key turning point in Chinese history by mapping out what I term a poetics of memory in the more than four hundred poems written by Du Fu !" (712-770) during his two-year stay in the remote town of Kuizhou (modern Fengjie County #$%). A survivor of the catastrophic An Lushan rebellion (756-763), which transformed Tang Dynasty (618-906) politics and culture, Du Fu was among the first to write in the twilight of the Chinese medieval period. His most prescient anticipation of mid-Tang concerns was his restless preoccupation with memory and its mediations, which drove his prolific output in Kuizhou. For Du Fu, memory held the promise of salvaging and creatively reimagining personal, social, and cultural identities under conditions of displacement and sweeping social change. The poetics of his late work is characterized by an acute attentiveness to the material supports—monuments, rituals, images, and texts—that enabled and structured connections to the past. The organization of the study attempts to capture the range of Du Fu’s engagement with memory’s frameworks and media. It begins by examining commemorative poems that read Kuizhou’s historical memory in local landmarks, decoding and rhetorically emulating great deeds of classical exemplars.
[Show full text]
An Analysis of the English Translation of Li Bai's Poems
International Journal of English, Literature and Social Science (IJELS) Vol-4, Issue-4, Jul – Aug 2019 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.4437 ISSN: 2456-7620 An Analysis of the English Translation of Li Bai’s Poems Huang Shanshan1, Wang Feng2 1School of Foreign Studies, Yangtze University, Hubei, 434023 PRC China Email: [email protected] 2School of Foreign Studies, Yangtze University, Hubei, 434023 PRC China Email:[email protected] (correspondence) Abstract— For more than 300 years, Li Bai’s poems have been translated, introduced and disseminated in large quantities, which undoubtedly plays an important role in the out-going of Chinese culture. Based on the general historical context of the English translation of Li Bai’s poems and the collected data about his translations, this study analyses the characteristics of his English translation in different periods and sums up how Li Bai’s poems have claimed the world literary status. Keywords— Li Bai’s poems, English translation, characteristics, the world literary status. I. INTRODUCTION II. In recent years, scholars in China and other countries 2.1 Before the 20th Century: the Initial Stage have become more and more enthusiastic about the As early as the 18th century, there were sporadic records translation of Li Bai’s poems and have made some of the poet Li Bai in the West. Most of these records were achievements. However, the research field is relatively made by missionaries, diplomats or sinologists. It is based isolated, mainly focusing on the translation theory or on these early explorations that the translation and practice, lacking of comprehensive interdisciplinary introduction of Li Bai’s poems can be developed rapidly research.
[Show full text]
Aristocratic Culture
Part 3: Cosmopolitan Tang: Aristocratic Culture 12: The Unified Empire: Cosmopolitan Tang Historical Overview Year Event 589 Reunification The Sui defeat of the Southern Dynasties ended the north/south split and the split between the ethnically Han and non-Han dynasties. Like the Qin it its time, this period of reunification, into the first years of the seventh century, sowed the seeds for the cultural and socio-political trends that would come to fruition in the Tang: Strengthening of central control over civil and military authorities. Economic links between N and S that led to the building of the canal. Expansion of the empire into SE and NE Asia Flourishing of Sinisized state Buddhism 630 Tang begins Amid the military overextension and environmental pressures that fomented the Sui civil war, the NE military became a dominant force. By 630, if I understood the lecture correctly, this force had achieved hegemony. The first century-and-a-half saw a new centralized aristocratic empire. Taxes were reorganized around the equal-field system, centralizing control over land and taxes. Non-Chinese people were integrated into the empire. 755-763 An Lushan rebellion Expansion into new areas taxed the Tang militia, requiring professional armies to staff the frontier posts. The An Lushan rebellion of 755-763, a frontier military rebellion, wreaked havoc on the dynasty and ushered in the developments we associate with Later Tang (but not the Later Tang Dynasty of 923). 760-918 Later Tang In this period, the tax system broke down along with relationships with the frontier kingdoms. The government retreated from commerce, opening the way for private enterprise.
[Show full text]
Patriotism in Li Bai's Tang Poetry and Its Influence on the English World Ma Yan, Wang Feng
International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, 5(4) Jul-Aug 2020 |Available online: https://ijels.com/ Patriotism in Li Bai's Tang Poetry and its Influence on the English World Ma Yan, Wang Feng School of Foreign Studies, Yangtze University,Hubei, 434023,PRC China *Corresponding Author Abstract— As a legendary poet in the history of Chinese literature, Li Bai is undoubtedly considered as one of the symbols of Chinese culture and national spirit. This article tries to explore and explain the patriotism in his poetry regarding Confucianism. The study of Li Bai's patriot passion not only helps translate Li Bai's poetry and Chinese culture but benefits the spread of excellent Chinese spiritual heritage to the whole world. Keywords— Li Bai's poetry, patriotism, national spirit, influence. I. INTRODUCTION wide acceptance of Chinese traditional culture and national Poetry is one of the best ways for people to know the spirit in the West. thoughts and culture of a nation. As one of the typical Patriotism, the ideological foundation and spiritual representatives of Chinese poetry, Tang poetry contains the support of Chinese civilization, is one of the cores of most precious cultural and spiritual treasures of the Chinese Chinese culture, full of vitality and vigour. It is also a nation, playing an important role in the spread of Chinese mighty power to unite the Chinese nation as a whole to culture to the Western world. ensure its survival and continuous development. Straightforward, unrestrained, wild and optimistic, Li Throughout the history of ancient Chinese poetry, from the Bai, the most outstanding poet in the Tang Dynasty is Book of Songs to the poems in the late Qing Dynasty, known as the "Poetry Immortal" and "Poet Knight-Errant".
[Show full text]
Imagery of Female Daoists in Tang and Song Poetry
Imagery of Female Daoists in Tang and Song Poetry by Yang Liu B.A. Changchun Normal University, 1985 M.A. Jilin University, 1994 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Asian Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April, 2011 © Yang Liu, 2011 Abstract This dissertation involves a literary study that aims to understand the lives of female Daoists who lived from the eighth to the twelfth centuries in China. Together with an examination of the various individual qualities manifested in their poetry, this study includes related historical background, biographical information and a discussion of the aspirations and cultural life of the female clergy. Unlike some of the previous scholarship that has examined Daoist deities and mythical figures described in hagiographical texts and literary creations, or on topics such as the Divine Mother of the West and miscellaneous goddesses and fairies, this work takes the perspective of examining female Daoists as historical persons who lived in real Daoist convents. As such, this work concentrates on the assorted images of female Daoists presented in their own poetic works, including those of Yu Xuanji, Li Ye, Yuan Chun, Cao Wenyi and Sun Bu-er. Furthermore, this thesis also examines poetic works about female Daoists written by male literati from both inside and outside the Daoist religion. I do this in order to illustrate how elite men, the group with whom female Daoists interacted most frequently, appreciated and portrayed these special women and their poetry. I believe that a study of their works on Daoist women will not only allow us a better understanding of the nature and characters of female Daoists, but will also contribute to our knowledge of intellectual life in Tang and Song society.
[Show full text]
Paper Title (Use Style: Paper Title)
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 142 4th International Conference on Education, Language, Art and Inter-cultural Communication (ICELAIC 2017) The Value of Antique Music Score in Li Bai Poem Yanshuang Hou Libai Research Center The Institute on Libai of Sichuan Province Mianyang, China 621000 School of Music University of Jinan Jinan, China 250022 School of Education Tianjin University Tianjin, China 300072 Xiaona Zhao Xinglong Guo* School of Music Libai Research Center Mianyang Normal University The Institute on Libai of Sichuan Province Mianyang, China 621000 Mianyang, China 621000 *Corresponding Author Abstract—Researching on Li Bai poem and music is mainly the present as a genius and a romantic figure who took focused on aesthetics, history and literature. Tang dynasty traditional poetic forms to new heights, and also titled as a poem and music are inter-dependent and mutually promoting. “Poem God”. It is recorded that there are about nine hundred Many studies concern on the legendary personality charm of ninty poems created by Li Bai. Li Bai poems conquered Li Bai and some other respects, such as cultural characteristics, many people from government officials to civilians at that thought connotation and cultural influence of poetry. However, time, and he won the high prestige and status. Among the the historical trace of AMS (Antique Music Score) in Li Bai history of poem, Li Bai is one of the most prominent figures poem was obviously ignored. People concluded that Li Bai in the flourishing of Chinese poetry in the Tang Dynasty. poem can be sung through analyzing Absolutely Sentence (one kind poetry form, Jue Ju) of Tang Dynasty poetry, the Li Bai collected the classical poem and opens a new relationship between Li Bai poem and music as well as sing world first.
[Show full text]
Constructing the Image Graph of Tang Poetry
Constructing the Image Graph of Tang Poetry Bihua Wang 1,2, Renfen Hu 1,2 and Lijiao Yang 1,2 1 Institute of Chinese Information Processing, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China 2 Ultra Power-BNU Joint Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract. Images are the soul of poetry. The usage of images enables poetry to express its deepest emotions in very concise expression. While the structured language of poetry bring convenience to computer processing, the accumulation of a large number of images also brings difficulty to deep semantic understand- ing. Starting from the definition of object imagery, this paper selects 304 Tang poems as experimental samples, extracts the object images from poems. Then it calculates the emotional tendency of object images according to the emotion system. Finally, it calculates the similarity between images to achieve the rele- vancy between the images and establishes the map of image relationship. This paper presents the relationship between images using visualization methods, which would help poetry learners understand the images intuitively, and pro- vide reference for correlation study of Tang poetry. Keywords: Image, Tang poetry, Poem graph. 1 Introduction The application of computer technology in literary research not only overcomes the shortcomings of traditional literary research like time-consuming and high cost, but also makes the research results more objective. As a result, computer assisted Chinese traditional literary research has been paid more and more attention as the natural lan- guage processing technology develops rapidly. Compared with novels, dramas and other literary forms, poetry have a more stable structure.
[Show full text]
University of Groningen the Other Neng Kuiken, Cornelis
University of Groningen The other Neng Kuiken, Cornelis Jan IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2002 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Kuiken, C. J. (2002). The other Neng: Topography and hagiography of the Sixth Ancestor. [S.n.]. Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). The publication may also be distributed here under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act, indicated by the “Taverne” license. More information can be found on the University of Groningen website: https://www.rug.nl/library/open-access/self-archiving-pure/taverne- amendment. Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 07-10-2021 The Other Neng 曹溪異祖 Dr. Kees Kuiken 荷蘭高艮博士 RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN The Other Neng Topography and Hagiography of the Sixth Ancestor Proefschrift ter verkrijging van het doctoraat in de Godgeleerdheid en Godsdienstwetenschap aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen op gezag van de Rector Magnificus, dr.
[Show full text]
EXPANDING the LANDSCAPE of EARLY and HIGH TANG LITERATURE by XIAOJING MIAO B.A., Minzu University of China, 2011 M.A., Minzu University of China, 2014
BEYOND THE LYRIC: EXPANDING THE LANDSCAPE OF EARLY AND HIGH TANG LITERATURE by XIAOJING MIAO B.A., Minzu University of China, 2011 M.A., Minzu University of China, 2014 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations 2019 This thesis entitled: Beyond the Lyric: Expanding the Landscape of Early and High Tang Literature written by Xiaojing Miao has been approved for the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations Dr. Paul W. Kroll, Professor of Chinese, Committee Chair Dr. Antje Richter, Associate Professor of Chinese Dr. Ding Xiang Warner, Professor of Chinese Dr. Matthias L. Richter, Associate Professor of Chinese Dr. Katherine Alexander, Assistant Professor of Chinese Dr. David Atherton, Assistant Professor of Japnanese Date The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. ii Miao, Xiaojing (Ph.D., Asian Languages and CivilizationEnglish) Beyond the Lyric: Expanding the Landscape of Early and High Tang Literature Thesis directed by Professor Paul W. Kroll This dissertation investigates what Tang (618-907) literature was in its own time, as opposed to how it has been constructed at later times and for different critical purposes. The core of this dissertation is to diversify and complicate our understanding of Tang literature, including Tang poetry, from the perspective of self-(re)presentation, and by bringing out certain genres, works, and literati that have been overlooked.
[Show full text]
How Did Buddhism Matter in Tang Poetry?
T’OUNG PAO 388 T’oung Pao 103-4-5Owen (2017) 388-406 www.brill.com/tpao International Journal of Chinese Studies/Revue Internationale de Sinologie How Did Buddhism Matter in Tang Poetry? Stephen Owen (Harvard University) Abstract Buddhism was often a theme in poetry, especially when writing to monks and on Buddhist sites; it was sometimes a deep conviction on the part of individual poets that contributed to the way they represented the world. There was a period, however, from the ninth through early eleventh century, when Chan meditation shaped how poets thought about the very way of writing poetry. The common use of the [Buddhist] “Way” or Chan in parallel with “poetry” in couplets from this period worked through the possible relations: identity, similarity, complementarity, and mutual exclusion. But the presumption was that the composition of poetry was the counterpart of Chan meditation. Such serious reflection on the relation between Chan meditation practice and poetry eventually devolved into Yan Yu’s thirteenth- century comparison of Chan sectarian doctrine with the study of poetry. Résumé Le bouddhisme est un thème très fréquent dans la poésie chinoise, en particulier quand le poète écrit à un moine ou au sujet d’un site bouddhique. Il constitue dans certains cas une conviction profonde qui contribue fortement à forger la représentation du monde telle que le poète l’exprime en vers. Il y eut cependant une époque, entre le ixe et le début du xie siècle, où la méditation Chan a façonné la façon même dont les poètes concevaient l’écriture poétique. L’usage fréquent des termes “Voie” (bouddhique) ou Chan en parallèle avec celui de “poésie” dans les couplets de cette époque couvre la gamme de leurs relations possibles: identité, similarité, complémentarité et exclusion mutuelle.
[Show full text]
Translating Across Cultures: Yi Jing and Understanding Chinese Poetry
Intercultural Communication Studies XXIII: 1 (2014) TANG Translating across Cultures: Yi Jing and Understanding Chinese Poetry Yanfang TANG The College of William and Mary, USA Abstract: Translating across cultures stands for a complicated and demanding process. In his well-known article “Chinese Poetry and the English Reader,” David Hawkes discussed the challenges of translating classical Chinese poetry into English, but he failed to examine a most distinctive feature of Chinese poetry, yi jing 意境. Commonly translated as “poetic world,” yi jing is as much a cultural and philosophical phenomenon as a poetic argument. It is most central to Chinese poetry and the failure to make a substitute for it in English translations hinders its proper understanding by learners of other cultural backgrounds. Using concrete examples, this article examines such failure on the part of the existing English translations and makes suggestions as to its remedy. A visual approach making use of paintings is advocated as a supplementary tool in the teaching of yi jing in the American classrooms. Keywords: Translation, yi jing, emotion and scene, painting in poetry, implicit expression, intersemiotic translation, visual approach 1. Introduction Translation refers to “the process of making a substitute in one language for something which was at first written in another” (Hawkes, 1971, p. 94). The task, however, is much more complicated than it appears, because it involves more than a transfer of linguistic information from a source text to a target text. Language is not an independent means of human expression, but is deeply embedded in or entangled with multiple other dimensions of the signification process, many of which are not linguistic but cultural and can evade translation easily because these “paralinguistic” elements are not readily evident in the text in the first place.
[Show full text]
UC San Diego UC San Diego Previously Published Works
UC San Diego UC San Diego Previously Published Works Title An Outline History of East Asia to 1200, second edition Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9d699767 Author Schneewind, Sarah Publication Date 2021-06-01 Supplemental Material https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9d699767#supplemental eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Second Edition An O utline H istory of Ea st A sia to 1200 b y S a r a h S c h n e e w i n d Second Edition An Outline History of East Asia to 1200 by S ar ah S chneewi nd Introduction This is the second edition of a textbook that arose out of a course at the University of California, San Diego, called HILD 10: East Asia: The Great Tradition. The course covers what have become two Chinas, Japan, and two Koreas from roughly 1200 BC to about AD 1200. As we say every Fall in HILD 10: “2400 years, three countries, ten weeks, no problem.” The book does not stand alone: the teacher should assign primary and secondary sources, study questions, dates to be memorized, etc. The maps mostly use the same template to enable students to compare them one to the next. About the Images and Production Labor The Cover This image represents a demon. It comes from a manuscript on silk that explains particular demons, and gives astronomical and astrological information. The manuscript was found in a tomb from the southern mainland state of Chu that dates to about 300 BC. I chose it to represent how the three countries of East Asia differ, but share a great deal and grew up together.
[Show full text]