Yutai Xinyong 玉臺新詠and the Practice of Anthologization in Early

Home , Book of Liang, Chen dynasty, Emperor Wu of Liang, Kang (Chinese surname), Kong Yingda, Lai (surname)

Yutai xinyong 玉臺新詠 and the Practice of Anthologization in Early Medieval China

THESIS

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the

Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Mengling Wang

Graduate Program in East Asian Languages and Literatures

The Ohio State University

2018

Master’s Examination Committee:

Professor Meow Hui Goh, Advisor

Professor Patricia Sieber

Mengling Wang

2018

Abstract

The thesis explores the cultural contexts and poetic innovations of the compilation of an anthology, Yutai xinyong 玉臺新詠 (New Songs from a Jade Terrace).

The anthology was allegedly compiled by Xu Ling 徐陵 (507-583), a well-known court scholar in the Southern Dynasties 南朝 (420-589) under the patronage of the Crown

Prince of Liang, Xiao Gang 蕭綱 (503-551). The focus of the thesis is how Yutai xinyong was anthologized. I discuss the compilation from several different perspectives: the compilation date, editorship, organization and selection criteria, and the socio-political environment at that time. I argue that Xu Ling was not the only compiler of this anthology and there were probably co-compilers in the same court. Furthermore, the anthology as we have it today was probably not compiled at one time. I propose that its compilation expanded to at least the Chen Dynasty 陳 (557-589), after the fall of Liang

Dynasty 梁朝 (502-557).

A detailed case study on the seventh and eighth juan 卷 (volume) of the anthology shows that nearly half the poems in these two juan are matching poems (heshi

和詩) or poems written at the imperial command (yingling shi 應令詩). Therefore, I argue that Yutai xinyong was a production that resulted from literary gatherings at the salons of the Crown Prince Xiao Gang 蕭綱 (503-551) and his younger brother Xiao Yi

蕭繹 (508-554). Court poets, along with the princes, were the main participants of the activities that created and shaped imperial literary works.

The Yutai xinyong has been viewed as a representative anthology of Palace Style

Poetry (Gongti shi 宮體詩) and has been criticized for its ornate diction and amorous themes through the centuries. Whether or not Yutai xinyong is a collection of Palace Style

Poetry is a complicated question to answer, because scholars are still debating what

Palace Style Poetry is. I believe a complex approach to the issue is to allow that Yutai xinyong is not a collection of a certain style, topic or theme of poetry; examined from this perspective, we will see that the anthology in fact features different poetic subgenres and various poetic styles. What Yutai xinyong reflects is in fact the sophisticated cultural and literary environment during the Southern Dynasties.

By analyzing the compilation of Yutai xinyong, I reach the conclusion that this anthology was not completed at one time and most likely not accomplished by a single compiler. Through close reading of the poems in the seventh and eighth juan, I argue that these two juan are the product of literary gatherings and group activities. These observations, hinging on the examination of two forms of ji 集 (“gathering”;

“collecting”), the gathering of literary men and the collection of literary works, initiate an exploration of Chinese court culture that centers on practices.

iii

Dedication

This thesis is dedicated to my family.

Acknowledgements

This thesis would not have been written without a great deal of support from many people. I owe my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Professor Meow Hui Goh, whose encouragement, guidance and support from the initial to the final phase enabled me to develop an understanding of the subject and to express myself with more precision than otherwise possible. I am deeply indebted to my research committee member,

Professor Patricia A. Sieber, who provided me with many critical suggestions that helped to develop the thesis in depth and width.

I would like to show my gratitude to Miss Wenting Zhao, and Miss Bing Mu, my dear friends, who encouraged and helped me through the whole academic year. Without you, I would not have been able to complete my program. A special thank to Mr. Hantian

Gao, who has been a great partner of my life, and accompanied me through all the twists and turns in these two years. My greatest appreciation also goes to my loving parents in

China, who always spare no effort to support my pursuit of dream. Especially, my mother flew from China to attend the graduation commencement.

I am also grateful to enjoy the supportive and wonderful academic environment in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literature in the Ohio State University.

Here, I would like to offer my regards and blessings to all of those who supported me in any respect during the completion of this project.

Vita

2016 ...... B.A. Chinese Language and Literature,

Nanjing University

2016 to present ...... Graduate Teaching Associate,

Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, The Ohio State University

Fields of Study

Major Field: East Asian Languages and Literatures

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Dedication ...... iv

Acknowledgements ...... v

Vita ...... vi

Table of Contents ...... vii

Introduction ...... 1

Historical Background ...... 3

Xiao Gang as the Patron of Compiling Yutai xinyong ...... 7

Approaches ...... 11

Chapter One ...... 20

Editions and Editorship of Yutai xinyong ...... 20

Anthologization as a Practice ...... 22

Extant Editions of the Yutai xinyong ...... 26

Editorship of the Yutai xinyong...... 36

Conclusion ...... 51

vii

Chapter Two ...... 53

Organization and Selection Criteria of Poems...... 53

“Palace Style Poetry” and Yutai xinyong...... 54

Organization of Yutai xinyong ...... 59

Selection Criteria of Yutai xinyong ...... 71

Making New Poetry ...... 78

Conclusion ...... 85

Chapter Three ...... 87

Literary Gatherings and Anthologization ...... 87

Literati Groups and Literary Salons ...... 91

Matching Poems Written at Imperial Command ...... 98

Searching for Self in the Gatherings ...... 115

Conclusion ...... 125

Conclusion ...... 126

Bibliography ...... 130

viii

Introduction

The subject matter of this thesis is Yutai xinyong, the famous anthology traditionally attributed to Xu Ling 徐陵 (507-583), a well-known court scholar who came under the patronage of the Crown Prince of Liang, Xiao Gang 蕭綱 (503-551). My focus is on how

Yutai xinyong was anthologized. In the chapters that follow, I will discuss the compilation of the anthology from several different perspectives: the compilation date, editorship, organization and selection criteria, and the socio-political environment in Xiao

Gang’s court. My approach is to set aside a definitive or stringent understanding of the anthology, allowing that it needs not be a collection of a certain style, topic or theme of poetry, by a single compiler, or even of a specific point in time. From this vantage point, my discussion will complicate the main assumptions about Yutai xinyong in current scholarship, including its attribution to Xu Ling, its reputation as a representative collection of “Palace Style poetry” (gongti shi 宮體詩), and, ultimately, its nature as a coherent or singular collection.

My discussion will hinge on the examination of two forms of ji 集 (“gathering”;

“collecting”), the gathering of literary men and the collection of literary works. The

Liang Dynasty 梁朝 (502-557), during which Yutai xinyong first took shape, was a period of time that witnessed a rich and vibrant literary culture, in which literary gatherings and the anthologization of literary works were two outstanding practices. This was also the time when imperial patronage was an essential force that molded the literary activities

1 and works of poets and writers.1 The accommodation of learned scholars or retainers with special skills at one’s own household had a long history, although belle lettres did not attain prominence until the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.-220 C.E.).2 In the Wei-Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties 魏晉南北朝 (220-589), it became more common for men of letters to gather around an imperial patron. The attitude of the patron toward literature played a critical role in fashioning literary tastes, influencing the formation of literary genres and charting new directions for poets.3 Xiao Gang, the Crown Prince of the Liang

Dynasty, himself an active poet, was the pivotal center of the two forms of ji that initiated

1 For discussions on aristocratic literati culture, see Zongqi Cai, ed. Chinese Aesthetics:

The Ordering of Literature, the Arts, and the Universe in the Six Dynasties (Honolulu:

University of Hawai’i Press, 2004), 18-20.

2 The “Four Lords” — headed by Tian Wen 田文 (n.d.), Lord Mengchang 孟嘗君 — of the Warring States periods (475-221 B.C.E) attracted a large number of scholars to their domains. Lü Buwei 呂不韋 (290-235 B.C.E.), who came close to being a literary patron, gathered thousands of retainers to compile the Lüshi Chunqiu 呂氏春秋 (Annals of

Master Lü), a work reflecting various philosophical currents. See Wendy Swartz, Lu

Yang, and Jessey Choo, eds. Early medieval China: A Sourcebook (NY: Columbia

University Press, 2013), 372-73.

3 See David R. Knechtges, “The Emperor and Literature: Emperor Wu of the Han,”

Imperial Rulership and Cultural Change in Traditional China, ed. Frederick P.

Brandauer and Chun-Chieh Huang (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994), 51-

76.

2 the compilation of Yutai xinyong. As we will see, his influence is most evident in the seventh and eighth juan of the anthology. But his strong presence in these two juan only calls into question the nature of the other juan.

Historical Background

After the brief reunification during the Western Jin Dynasty 西晉 (265-316),

China entered a period of division that lasted for 272 years, from 317 to 589. The Liang

Dynasty 梁 (502-557) alone experienced almost fifty-years of relative peace under the reign of Xiao Yan 蕭衍 (464-549, r. 502-549), known posthumously as Emperor Wu of

Liang, in the south.

The Southern Dynasties 南朝 (420-589) inherited an aristocratic system passed down from the previous Wei 魏 (220-265) and Jin 晉 Dynasties (265-420).4 In this system, power shifts occurred within an exclusive and privileged circle, and members of the top-ranking aristocratic families held important official positions. They arranged marriages within aristocratic circle to protect their privileges, and formed an administrative system tailored for menfa shizu 門閥士族 (“nobel families and gentry clans”), making it difficult for others, including the talents who came from hanmen 寒門

4 Patricia Buckley Ebrey, and Anne Walthall, East Asia: A cultural, social, and political history (Cengage Learning, 2013), 67. See also, Mark Edward Lewis, China between empires: the northern and southern dynasties, vol. 2. (MA: Harvard University Press,

2009), 93-115.

(low-rank gentry class), to obtain upward social mobility.5 Such menfa politics gradually weakened the capacity and power of the aristocracy. This provided opportunities for the military commanders who were from the lower gentry class to seize power and eventually usurp the throne. The Xiao clan of Lanling 蘭陵 (in modern day Shandong

Province 山東省), which became the imperial families of the Qi and Liang Dynasties, rose to prominence in this manner. Emperor Wu of Liang, an outstanding member of this clan, was the one who made the Liang Dynasty the high point of the entire era of division.

Although Emperor Wu rose to power from a military background, he was recognized for his broad knowledge, which crossed the boundaries of Confucianism,

Buddhism and Daoism.6 He was viewed as a representative figure that was as cultivated as the Six Dynasties gentry.7 Even his hostile rival in the north, Gao Huan 高歡 (496-

547), acknowledged that in the mind of the northern gently, legitimacy rested in the south with Emperor Wu.8 If his wise military stratagems and keen political sense helped his rise

5 Liu Yuejin, Menfa shizu yu Yongming wenxue 門閥士族與永明文學, (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1996), 12-23.

6 Pan Guiming 潘桂明, “Shilun Liang Wudi ‘sanjiao’ sixiang ji qi lishi yingxiang” 試論

梁武帝“三教”思想及其歷史影響, Kongzi yanjiu (1986: 4): 70-81.

7 Mori Mikisaburō 森三樹三郎, Ryō no Bu Tei 梁の武帝 (Kyoto: Heirakuji shoten,

1956), 4.

8 “There is an old man of Wu at the east of the Yangtze River called Xiao Yan, who wholeheartedly works on regulations and etiquette. Gentlemen in the Central Plain look

4 to the throne, then his broad knowledge of literature, religion and arts played an important role in his ruling the empire. Despite the unstable relationship with the north,

Emperor Wu was able to create a relatively tolerant and peaceful political environment within his empire, especially in the first half of his reign.9 He re-established Confucian schools for the younger generations and organized projects of compiling and annotating

Confucian classics, the Buddhist canon and Daoist scriptures. At the same time, literary activities became more frequent than ever and literary talent was a bridge to official opportunities. In both the capital and regions, the emperor’s sons hosted literary salons.

Finally, literary men pursued new aesthetic tastes and innovative poetics, leading, among others, the blossoming of literary criticism. In addition to activities in literature, public lectures on Daoist doctrines and grand Buddhist events were held officially and

towards him and consider that the legitimacy rests in the south with him.” 江東復有一吳

兒老翁蕭衍者，專事衣冠禮樂，中原士大夫望之以為正朔所在. See Li Baiyao 李百

藥, Bei Qi shu 北齊書 (History of Northern Qi), “Du Bi” 杜弼, (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1972), 24.347.

9 For studies on the Emperor Wu of Liang Dynasty, see Zhou Yiliang 周一良, “Lun

Liang Wudi ji qi shidai” 論梁武帝及其時代, Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi lun 魏晉南北朝史

論集 (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1997), 338-68. See also Xu Hui 許輝, “Lang

Wudi tongzhi shulun” 梁武帝統治述論, Xuehai 學海 (1995: 5): 89-94.

5 frequently by Emperor Wu and his sons. Painting, calligraphy, game playing, music, and singing and dancing were popular with the upper class.10

Emperor Wu’s long reign allowed religion and literature to flourish. However, his longevity also led to the fall of the dynasty he founded. He was criticized for forgiving his sixth son, the “trouble maker” Xiao Lun 蕭綸 (507-551), for his wrongdoings and crimes.11 After Xiao Lun was demoted to the status of a commoner and put under house arrest, Emperor Wu restored Xiao Lun’s title and official positions, even encouraging him in his poetry composition.12 Later, Emperor Wu’s dependence on Hou Jing 侯景

(503-552) also led him to make misjudgments in his old age, and it was this relationship, some claim, that was responsible for the chaos that occurred at the end of his reign.13 In

10 Mori Mikisaburō observes that Emperor Wu of Liang conducted the grandest project of compiling the annotation on Confucian rituals, which took more than twenty years to finish and included 1,176 juan. However, only Zhou li 周禮 (The Zhou Rituals) was given a cold shoulder. Since Zhou li is mainly about a state’s official system, Mori remarks that, the disesteem indicates the southern gentry’s indifference to the state and politics. See Mori Mikisaburō, Rikuchō shitaifu no seishin 六朝士大夫の精神 (Kyoto:

Dōhō sha shuppan, 1986), 117.

11 Li Yanshou 李延壽, “Liang Wu Di zhuzi” 梁武帝諸子 in Nan shi 南史 (History of

Southern dynasties) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1975), 53.1318-1323.

12 Ibid.

13 Cao Daoheng 曹道衡, “Lun Liang Wudi yu Liangdai de xingwang” 論梁武帝與梁代

的興亡, Qi Lu xuekan 齊魯學刊 (2001: 1): 45-54.

6 his last years, his desire for the reunification of the south and north lured him to accept a surrender from the north. Hou Jing, who starved the emperor to death after occupying the capital, would eventually destroy the Liang completely. The Liang Dynasty eked out a meagre existence for about eight more years after the emperor’s death, until the Chen

Dynasty 陳 (557-589) usurped the throne from Emperor Wu’s grandson.14

Xiao Gang as the Patron of Compiling Yutai xinyong

Xiao Gang 蕭綱 (503-551, r. 549-551), known posthumously as Emperor

Jianwen of Liang 梁簡文帝, was born as Emperor Wu’s third son in the second year after the Liang Dynasty was established. He lived almost his entire life under Emperor Wu’s reign, except the last three years as a puppet emperor after the emperor’s death. In every aspect, Xiao Gang’s life was deeply connected with Emperor Wu. To Xiao Gang,

Emperor Wu was not only the emperor and a father but also a role model for his life.15

Xiao Gang became Crown Prince upon the death of his older brother, Xiao Tong 蕭統

(501-531), posthumously known as Zhaoming Taizi 昭明太子 (Crown Prince of

Resplendent Brilliance). Before becoming a crown prince, he served as a governor in multiple regions. He launched a successful military campaign against the northern

14 Nan shi, “Hou Jing” 侯景, 80.1994.

15 Cao Daoheng 曹道衡, “Zhaoming Taizi he Liang Wu Di de jianchu wenti” 昭明太子

和梁武帝的建储问题, Zhengzhou Daxue xuebao [Zhexue shehui kexue ban] 鄭州大學

學報(哲學社會科學版) 1 (1994): 47-53.

7 regime, and the instructions he issued at Yongzhou 雍州 (in modern Hubei Province 湖

北省) demonstrate his sympathy for local people and his efforts to make changes in the official system. There are two commands Xiao Gang issued when he was a Regional

Inspector of Yongzhou that have survived: one is “Instructions for Showing Leniency and

Reducing People’s Monetary Contributions in Yongzhou” (臨雍州原減民間資教),16 and the other one is “Instructions for Abolishing Corruption and Idleness in Yongzhou” (臨雍

州革貪惰教).17 The first command was to lighten their burden, while the second one attempted to make some changes in the officialdom.

Xiao Tong died on the twenty-ninth day of the fourth month in the third year of the Zhong-Datong Era 中大通 (May 31, 531). An imperial decree was issued on the twenty-seventh day of the fifth month in the same year (June 27, 531), proclaiming Xiao

Gang’s establishment as the new crown prince. His appointment was rationalized as follow:

Prince of Jin’an, [Xiao] Gang, is born to understand argumentations in literary

writings, [his] filial piety and respect come from his nature. His prestige and

mercy glow outwards; he is perceptive with moral integrity by nature. Seigneurs

and dukes admire him; [people] all over the country gladly and wholeheartedly

are convinced. Thus [Xiao Gang] is approved as the Crown Prince.

16 Quan Shanggu Sandai Qin Han Sanguo Liuchao wen 全上古三代秦漢三國六朝文, comp. Yan Kejun 嚴可均 (1762-1843) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1958), 3000.

17 Ibid., 3000.

晉安王綱，文義生知，孝敬自然，威惠外宣，德行內敏，羣后歸美，率土宅

心。可立為皇太子。18

Xiao Gang seemed to understand Emperor Wu’s concerns. He accepted the appointment despite receiving opposite advice.19 As an accomplished scholar just like his father and brother Crown Prince Zhaoming, Xiao Gang assembled scholars to compile books and provided them with wonderful feasts and the imperial library. The ten members who were selected for this kind of project were given an appellation — “Gaozhai xueshi” 高齋學士

(“Scholars of the Lofty Studio”).20 After he became Crown Prince, Xiao continued supporting literary activities in the Eastern Palace enthusiastically. According to the Nan shi, he tirelessly discussed literary works with his men of letters and composed literary writings with them.21 Xiao Gang not only associated with well-known literati who shared the same interests with him, but was also known for his patronage of younger talents.

Xiao Gang had known Xu Ling 徐陵 (507-583) and Yu Xin 庾信 (513-581) since they

18 Nan shi, “Liang Wu Di zhuzi” 梁武帝諸子, 53.104.

19 Xiaofei Tian further hypothesizes that Xiao Gang’s acceptance was due to his understanding of the political situation. See Xiaofei Tian, Beacon fire and shooting star:

The literary culture of the Liang (502-557) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia

Center, 2007), 277.

20 Nan shi, “Yu Jianwu” 庾肩吾, 50.1246.

21 引納文學之士，賞接無倦，恒討論篇籍，繼以文章. See Yao Silian 姚思廉, Liang shu 梁書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1973), “Jianwen Di” 簡文帝, 4.109.

9 were children because of their fathers, Xu Chi 徐摛 (474-551) and Yu Jianwu 庾肩吾 (d.

551 or 552), who served him as his close courtiers for a considerable period of time. They grew up in what must be a very rich literary environment in Xiao Gang’s household.

Zhang Zhengjian 張正見 (n.d.) and Yao Cha (533-606) were introduced to Xiao Gang when they were thirteen years old. Xiao admired their literary precocity and made them guests of his literary salon.22 The former three, Xu Ling, Yu Xin and Zhang Zhengjian, were known as important literati in the following dynasties and had a strong influence on contemporary literature.23 Yao Cha, who became a historian later on, compiled the draft of the Liang shu 梁書 (The Book of Liang) that preserved the history of Liang after its fall. Without the support of Xiao Gang, Yutai xinyong might not have been compiled, since he was known as the commissioner of this anthology.

Xiao Gang is not only the patron of literary production in the Liang Dynasty, he was also a keen poet himself. In the Xian Qin Han Wei Jin Nan-bei Chao shi, Xiao

Gang’s poetry is divided into two categories: yuefu 樂府 (Music Bureau) and shi 詩

22 At the age of thirteen, Yao Cha was invited to Xiao Gang’s literary salon in Xiao’s residence in the Eastern Palace. See “Yao Cha” 姚察 in Yao Silian 姚思廉, Chen shu 陳

書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1992), 27.348; 69.1689. See also Chen shu, “Zhang

Zhengjian” 張正見, 34.469.

23 Chen shu, “Xu Ling” 徐陵, 26.335. See also Nan shi, “Xu Chi” 徐摛, 62.1525. See

Zhou shu 周書, “Yu Xin” 庾信, 41.733. For their influence on literature, see Liang shu,

“Wenxue shang” 文學上, 49.690.

(poem). Leaving out those with disputed authorship,24 Xiao Gang’s extant poetry amounts to approximately 261 works.25 The Yutai xinyong is not only the earliest primary source for Xiao Gang’s surviving poetry, among the six early sources anterior to the end of the Tang Dynasty, it is also the second main source, surpassed only by the Yiwen leiju

藝文類聚 (Collection of Literature Arranged by Categories). Of his 261 extant poems, sixty-eight are contained in the Yutai xinyong, and this portion comprises about 26% of his entire extant poetic works.26

Approaches

Generations of Confucian historians blame his Palace Style Poetry (Gongti shi 宮

體詩) for causing the fall of the Liang. This poetry was deemed “decadent” and lacking in morality. “Decadent” is a term originally applied in the domain of European literary criticism, Fusheng Wu was the first one who proposed to “define ‘decadence’

24 The statistics regarding the number of Xiao Gang’s extant works is based on Xian Qin

Han Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi 先秦漢魏晉南北朝詩, ed. Lu Qinli 逯欽立 (Beijing:

Zhonghua shuju, 1983). There are 12 yuefu and 11 shi attributed to him whose authorship is disputed. In the following statistics, these disputed verses are not included.

25 Since the last two shi on page Lu Qinli, 1980 only retain two lines and one line respectively, they are not included here.

26 Among the 68 works, 24 are under the yuefu category and 44 works belong to shi.

These numbers exclude 10 poems that are of disputed authorship.

11 systematically in the Chinese poetic tradition.”27 The term “decadence” or “decadent” indicates the “behavior, attitudes, etc. which show a fall in standards, especially moral ones, and an interest in pleasure and enjoyment rather than more serious things.”28 In the commentary of his official biography, his poems were described as excessively ornate and lacking in political function, contrary to what poems should be according to traditional Confucian ideology. Historians linked the fall of Liang Dynasty to Xiao

Gang’s poetic writing in the standard history:

Taizong (Xiao Gang) was clever and perspicacious as a child. His good reputation

was established early. By nature, he was generous and untrammelled, superior to

those from antiquity to the present. His writing, however, was criticized because

it was frivolous and flowery. It is not something a gentleman would like. By the

time of his nourishing his virtue in the Eastern Palace, his good reputation spread

widely. As soon as he inherited the regime, [he] truly had imperial virtue. His

27 Fusheng Wu, “Xiao Gang and Palace Style Poetry,” The Poetics of

Decadence Chinese Poetry of the Southern Dynasties and Late Tang Periods (NY:

SUNY Press, 1998), 6. See also Fusheng Wu, “Decadence in Chinese Literature: Xiao

Gang’s Palace Style Poetry,” Hanxue yanjiu 漢學研究 15.1 (1997): 351–95.

28 Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (UK: Oxford University Press 2011), s.v.

“decadence.” The moral standard in this case refers to the Confucian orthodoxy established during the Han Dynasty (202 B.C.-220), and the Confucian scholars mentioned in this thesis refer to those who follow this tradition.

way of doing things was in accordance with Wen and Jing’s [good governance];29

but his fate fell into straits and decay. He was enslaved by a treacherous minister,

and was not able to make use of what he obtained. He finally suffered the cruel

destiny of Huai and Min.30 How sad!31

史臣曰：太宗幼年聰睿，令問夙標，天才縱逸，冠於今古。文則時以輕華為

累，君子所不取焉。及養德東朝，聲被夷夏，洎乎繼統，寔有人君之懿

矣。方符文、景，運鍾屯、剝，受制賊臣，弗展所蘊，終罹懷、愍之酷，

哀哉！

29 “Wen and Jing” refer to the Han Emperor Wen, Liu Heng (劉恆, 202-157 B.C., r. 180-

157 B.C.), and his son the Han Emperor Jing, Liu Qi (劉啟, 189-141 B.C., r. 157-141

B.C.). They reduced taxes and corvée from commoners. Their generous governance brought economic prosperity. For their biographies, see Han shu, “Wen Di, Liu Heng” 文

帝劉恆, 4.105-135; and HS, “Jing Di, Liu Qi” 景帝劉啟, 5.137-153.

30 Emperors Xiaohuai, Sima Chi 司馬熾 (284-313), and Emperor Xiaomin, Sima Ye 司

馬鄴 (300-318), were emperors of the Western Jin Dynasty. They both suffered bad fates.

See JS, “Di ji di wu” 帝纪第五, 5.115-136.

31 Liang shu, “Jianwen Di” 簡文帝, 4.109.

Criticizing Xiao Gang’s writing as “frivolous” and “flowery” reveals one comman view on how “decadence” Xiao’s work had influenced the fate of the empire32 , and this view has been often related to the Palace Style Poetry33.

Yutai xinyong has long been regarded as an anthology commonly associated with

Palace Style Poetry. But what is “Palace Style”? Scholar’s views on Palace Style Poetry changed tremendously from Southern Dynasties. Yao Cha 姚察 (533-606), the author of

Liang shu 梁書, seems to think of Palace Style Poetry only in terms of highly ornamented diction and a strict observance of the tonal rules.34 But the Tang historians had already begun to define Palace Style Poetry mainly from a thematic point of view, and considered

Palace Style poems as “erotic poems” (yanshi 艷詩), specifically on beautiful women, written in an elegant, ornate language.35 Modern Chinese scholars, although acknowledging its “technical” or “aesthetic” sophistication, nonetheless condemn it as at best frivolous, overtly ornamental, lacking serious content, and even indecent and

32 Zizhi tongjian 資治通鑒, “Liang ji shiwu” 梁紀十五, in Sima Guang 司馬光 comp.

(Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou gujichubanshe, 2003), 159.1552-1553.

33 Yan Zhitui 顏之推, Yan shi jiaxun jijie 顏氏家訓集解, “Mianxue di ba” 勉學第八, in

Wang Liqi 王利器 ed. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1993), 145.

34 See Liang shu, 43.690.

35 See Cao Daoheng 曹道衡 and Shen Yucheng 沈玉成, Nanbei chao wenxue shi 南北朝

文學史 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1991), 240-41.

14 immoral.36 In the English scholarship, Palace Style Poetry has been critiqued no better.

Since it deals primarily with “ladies of the palace, particularly who, out of favor with their lord, are languishing in neglect,” its treatment of woman as “object” comes especially under attack as voyeuristic and male-chauvinist.37 François Martin defines

Palace Style Poetry as follows:

(a) a poem of preferably short form (four or eight lines) answering the new roles

of tonal prosody first set down by Shen Yue and afterward improved upon by

Xiao Gang, his masters, and his followers, all great admirers of the famous poet.

(b) a poem where heavy, systematic parallelism is rather to be avoided in favor of

syntactic liberation and original formulation.

typically, to the life of palace women. It seems that even when the poem is not

explicitly related to women, it is expected of the poet to relate the poem in one

way or another to the feminine world, often by some pun very often not devoid of

humor.38

36 Ibid., 243-44. See also Wang Zhongling 王鐘陵, Zhongguo zhonggu shigeshi 中國中

古詩歌史 (Jiangsu: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe. 1986), 734-38.

37 Burton Watson, Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry from the Second to the Twelfth Century

(New York: Columbia University Press. 1971), 91.

38 François Martin, “Literary Games and Religious Practice at the End of the Six

Dynasties” in Zongqi Cai, ed. Chinese Aesthetics: The Ordering of Literature, the Arts,

Martin’s definition grasps the “newness” of tonal prosody in Palace Style Poetry, yet it adheres to the view that Gongti shi present a thematic consistency in depicting women or femine world.

In recent years, refutations against an overtly simplified and negative view on

Palace Style Poetry have been voiced out. Xiaofei Tian strongly disputes the common assumptions about Palace Style Poetry, pointing out two basic facts. She argues:

First, it is a historical term; to be precise, it is a name given to the poetry written

by Xiao Gang and his courtiers in the last two decades of the Liang, with “palace”

referring specifically to the Eastern Palace, the crown prince’s residence. Second,

the ti 體 in gongti indicates a style, a form, and does not necessarily have

anything to do with the content or the subject matter of the poetry.39

I highly agree with this view on bringing historical and cultural contexts into account.

Tian’s first point highlights the origin of Palace Style Poetry in the Liang court, so the traditional argument of viewing Yutai xinyong as a representative work of Palace Style

Poetry does not stand on a firm ground, due to the fact that the poems in the first to sixth juan are clearly pre-Liang Dynasty works. Tian’s second point supports the possibility of thematic diversity in Yutai xinyong. Clearly, this anthology of over 600 poems does not only or always portray palace ladies. Also worthnoting is Tian’s argument that “Palace

Style Poetry represents a new way of seeing the phenomenal world informed by the

and the Universe in the Six Dynasties (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004),

227.

39 Xiaofei Tian, Beacon Fire and Shooting Stars, 175.

Buddhist concepts of meditative visualization and illumination. It focuses on temporal and spatial particularity, typically on small details.”40 Xiao Gang was keen on Buddhist culture, and there is a connection between his patronage of Buddhist works such as

Fabao lianbi 法寶聯璧 (Linked Jades of Dharma Treasures) and Yutai xinyong.41 I will discuss this point in detail in Chapter Two.

In my thesis, I follow Xiaofei Tian’s understanding of Palace Style Poetry. By probing the historial and cultural background during the Qi-Liang era, I argue that

“Palace Style Poetry” is by no means a term that can be simply applied to poems related to womanly beauty or the “feminine” world. By using approaches of historical reading and close reading, Yutai xinyong reveals a highly diversified culture in the court.

Ultimately, my focus is on the cultural practice of ji 集 (“gathering”), a multi-layered term that refers both to the gathering of a group of literary men, as well as to the anthologizing—that is, the gathering or collecting of—literary works.

Another major term I am using with caution is “editorship.” A comparative look at critical studies of editorship in modern literary criticism can offer us some insights on building a workable theoretical framework. Hans Walter Gabler opines: “What editors

40 Wendy Swartz, Lu Yang, and Jessey Choo, eds. Early medieval China: A Sourcebook.

(NY: Columbia University Press, 2013), 259.

41 Nan shi, “Liang benji xia” 梁本紀下, 8.233. See also Liang shu, “Jianwen Di” 簡文帝,

4.109.

17 edit are not works, but texts.”42 “Text” can be understood as “writing” both as “process and product” and includes both the materiality of paper documents, ink and woodblock print and the “immateriality of oral composition and transmission.”43 Conceptualizing the role of the editor within a theoretical framework inspired by New Criticism for textual scholarship, Gabler describes the scholarly edition as “the presentation of a text—literary, historical, philosophical, juridical—or of a work (mainly, a work of literature) in its often enough several texts, through the agency of an editor in lieu of the author of the text, or work.”44

The analogy to scholarly editing sheds light on early medieval Chinese literati editorial practices, which often combined the work of both commentators and connoisseurs of literary works. Gabler proposes to regard the editor as “agency,”45 and this concept of “agency” is crucial to our understanding of the role played by the literary patron Xiao Gang, the leading literary man and the commissioner in the compilation of

Yutai xinyong, who acted as a negotiator in the triangle of author, textual transmission and reader. As a Crown Prince, Xiao Gang was capable of providing literary activities with financial and resource support, and he frequently organized literary gatherings in the court. As an active poet, he also casted strong personal interests on the literary trends.

42 Hans Walter Gabler, Text Genetics in Literary Modernism and other Essays

(Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2018), 78.

43 Ibid., 92.

44 Ibid., 122.

45 Ibid., 121.

Based on close reading of historical records and the poems in the anthology, I argue that Yutai xinyong, much like Wen xuan 文選 (Selection of Refined Literature), is a collective court project, and, although it would have been entirely possible for Xu Ling to work on the project at Xiao Gang’s command, we should not deny the possibility that this project was accomplished by a group of compilers.46 I also propose that the selection of poetry in the Yutai xinyong reflects that this anthology is not merely a collection of

Palace Style Poetry. What the court poets had done was not only a continuation of this tradition, but also a development of “new” poetry.

46 For discussions on the co-compilers of Wen xuan, see Shimizu Yoshio 清水凱夫,

“Monzen senja kō—Shōmei taishi to Ryū Kōshaku” 文選撰者考—昭明太子と劉孝綽,

Gakurin 學林 (1984: 3): 46-64. For a study of Wen xuan and a translation of parts of its collection, see David R. Knechtges, trans. Wen xuan or Selections of Refined Literature, vols.1-3 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982, 1987, 1996). See also Ping Wang,

The Age of Courtly Writing: Wen xuan Compiler Xiao Tong (501-531) and His Circle

(Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012).

Chapter One

Editions and Editorship of Yutai xinyong

This chapter deals with fundamental questions regarding Yutai xinyong 玉臺新詠

(New Songs from the Jade Terrace) as an anthology, namely, editions and editorship. The

Yutai xinyong is a collection of mostly penta-syllabic poetry whose compilation is usually credited to Xu Ling. Zhang Peiheng 張培恒 and some of his students have proposed that the actual compiler of the Yutai xinyong was not Xu Ling but Zhang Lihua 張麗華 (560-

589), the favorite concubine of the last ruler of the Chen dynasty (557-589), Chen Shubao

陳叔寶 (553-604, r. 582-589).47 Zhang Peiheng’s argument is solely based on a close reading of Xu Ling’s preface to the Yutai xinyong, and he thinks that Xu Ling was the one wrote the preface to compliment Zhang Lihua.

In Xiaofei Tian’s Beacon fire and shooting star, she argues against Anne Birrell’s analysis on Xu Ling’s preface to Yutai xinyong. As a pioneer researcher on Yutai xinyong in English language, Birrell has translated the whole anthology into English and wrote a book on Yutai xinyong. Tian says,

Birrell has performed an important service to the field by rendering all of Xu

Ling’s anthology into English, but it is a risky business to read too much into Xu

Ling’s preface and to treat it as a covert literary manifesto with such anachronistic

modern echoes as “art for art’s sake.” In the course of literary history, there

47 See Zhang Peiheng 張培恒, “Yutai xinyong wei Zhang Lihua suo zhuanlu kao” 《玉臺

新詠》為張麗華所撰錄考, in Wenxue pinglun 文學評論, 2004:2, 12-21.

certainly has been no lack of prefaces to poetry or prose anthologies that voice the

writer’s general views on literature, and yet we need to keep in mind the

immediate context of the anthology at hand in order to avoid generalizing the

authorial intent expressed in the preface. 48

I strongly agree with Tian’s view on not “read[ing] too much into Xu Ling’s preface.”

Granted, Xu Ling’s preface is an important window for understanding Yutai xinyong, particularly because it is a preface written to the anthology by a known author. It is, however, misleading to think that the preface can tell us all we need to know about the anthology or that it is a “definite statement” about the anthology. As Gerard Genette points out, there are different types of prefaces written to serve different functions.49

Often times, the preface is not written as the anthology is being compiled, and in the case of Xu Ling’s preface, we do not even know when it was compiled in relation to Yutai xinyong, but even if we have the information, we still have no certainty as to what its exact function was. Rather than relying on the preface to study an anthology, as Xiaofei

Tian points out, we need to “keep in mind the immediate context of the anthology at hand.”50

48 Xiaofei Tian, Beacon fire and shooting star, 189.

49 Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of interpretation vol. 20 (Cambridge University

Press, 1997), 237.

50 Ibid., 187.

Anthologization as a Practice

The first question I will discuss in length in this chapter is regarding the definition of anthology. Interestingly, when looking into the meaning of anthology, the first lexicon root “legein” in Greek means “gather,” and the word “anthology” was coined together in

Greek, as for “anthos” which means “flowers” and “logia” which means “collection.”51 In

Greek, the word originally denoted a collection of the “flowers” of verse, i.e., small choice poems or epigrams, by various authors. While applying modern concepts into

Chinese Classical literary studies, there are always risks which we should be fully aware of. The part all might agree with is that anthology is a collection of literary works, and therefore it is an appropriate way to call Yutai xinyong an anthology. We have to be cautious enough to notice that the term “anthology,” based on its lexicon origin, does not necessarily contain the meaning of single-authored or single-styled collection.

Literary history represents a process of selection, which culminates in the case of classical Chinese literature, also in authors and works found in Chinese school textbooks.

There are still unsolved questions regarding whether there is a “coherent” literary history, which focuses on the Chinese culture represented by the “best works” produced over the centuries. The following section traces developments in literary history by focusing on anthology making and canon formation, and by providing views on transmission of classical literature in medieval China. The processes of collecting, selecting, editing, and commenting on literary works are informed by larger cultural and social changes, and become a crucial aspect of literary production and consumption. This is especially true at

51 Oxford Dictionary of English, 2010. s.v. “anthology”.

22 a time when anthologization process meant much more than merely inclusion of texts, but also determine its physical survival. In many cases, the reading of a text in the context of a certain anthology also impacts the interpretation and evaluation of the text itself.

Toward the end of Western Han Dynasty, Liu Xiang 劉向 (79-8 BCE) and his son Liu Xin 劉昕 (d. 23 BCE) organized the remains of the pre-Han and earlier Western

Han manuscripts, stabilized texts, and created books with authors.52 Subsequently, there have been several important moments in the transmission of classical literature. The first occurred in the fifth and sixth centuries, which witnessed an intense interest toward belletristic literature and a revival of interest in earlier poetry. This happened during the

Southern Dynasties, when emperors were actively engaged in literary production . They regard literary works as a form of representation of their own kingship and the southern empire, and at that time, literary scholarship was institutionalized.53 This period saw the first accounts of literary history as well as an unprecedented boom in literary anthologies, from zongji 總集 (comprehensive collection) to bieji 別集 (literary collections of individual authors), from multi-genre anthology to single-genre anthology. In many ways, the Southern Dynasties literati shaped and mediated our knowledge and perception of early classical Chinese literature. The subject matter of this thesis is one of the three anthologies which survived from this period, is the Yutai xinyong, a single-genre anthology of poetry. The other two anthologies preserved along with the Yutai xinyong are the renowned Wen xuan 文選 (Selections of Refined Literature), a multiple-genre

52 Xiaofei Tian, Beacon fire and shooting star, 67.

53 The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, “Introduction,” xxx.

23 anthology; and Hongming ji 弘明集 (Collection of the Propagation of Light), an anthology of prose from the Eastern Han (25-220) to the Liang 梁 (502-557) compiled by the Buddhist monk Sengyou 僧祐 (445-518). These three anthologies are particularly important and irreplaceable in Chinese literary history, because they constitute major sources of pre-Tang literature when well over ninety-five percent of pre-Tang anthologies and individual collections are no longer extant.54

The complicated cultural politics of literary history is most clearly revealed in the case of the Yutai xinyong. It is the first anthology of poetry after Shijing 詩經 (The

Classic of Poetry) and Chuci 楚辭 (Verses of Chu), which have survived more or less intact. Many scholars argue that Yutai xinyong was compiled for a female readership by analyzing Xu Ling’s preface to Yutai xinyong,55 which is arguable at this point, as it is highly diversed in terms of poem selection, and it was an extremely popular anthology read by both men and women, not only at the time it was compiled but also among later generations. Its popularity was attested by its very survival in a continuous manuscript tradition from a time of overwhelming textual losses, as well as by anthologies inspired by it, such as the Yutai houji 玉臺後集 and Yaochi xinyong 瑤池新詠 in the Tang

Dynasty (618-907).

54 Ibid., 154.

55 Xiaofei Tian, Beacon fire and shooting star, 195. See also Paul F. Rouzer, Articulated ladies: Gender and the male community in early Chinese texts (Harvard University Asia

Center, 2001), 132.

Yutai xinyong includes many poems overlapping with the Wen xuan through the end of the fifth century, demonstrating that the compilers of Wen xuan and Yutai xinyong shared some similar literary values. Therefore, it is unnecessary to set these two anthologies on the opposite side of the table. Yet, whereas Wen xuan excludes living authors, Yutai xinyong contains copious representation of contemporary works, including poems by the Wen xuan compiler Xiao Tong himself, and enables us to see the rich literary tastes and environment of the sixth century. It also preserves numerous poems that would otherwise have been lost or transmitted in fragmentary forms, including a rare long narrative poem on a tragic love story.56 Classical Chinese literature would have been much more meagre without Yutai xinyong. In modern times, however, Yutai xinyong is consistently ignored or denigrated, taken to exemplify the “decadence” of the southern court. While a branch of learning formed around Wen xuan and was dubbed “Xuan xue”

選學 (“Wen xuan studies”), Yutai xinyong has only begun to receive serious attention in recent years. Yet if some of the writings from the anthologies have been independently studied by scholars of religion and of literature, these anthologies as a whole are not treated as great points of interest in most literary historical accounts, reflecting a later bias against women and religious writings that was, however, not characteristic of the period in which these anthologies were made.

56 The poem is called “Gushi wei Jiao Zhongqing qi zuo” 古詩為焦仲卿妻作 (“An old poem written for Jiao Zhongqing’s wife”). See Yutai xinyong jianzhu 玉臺新詠箋註, annot. Wu Zhaoyi 吳兆宜 and Cheng Yan 程琰 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1985), 42.

Extant Editions of the Yutai xinyong

Most of the manuscripts from six dynasties had been experiencing a

“transmission vacuum” period from the end of six dynasties, to early Tang, and even to

Song dynasty. Since we can only discuss the contents based on editions, we might regard each feature that appears in each edition as equally indicative of what the “original” edition might have been. The more we embrace different editions and the more we examine them from different perspectives, the more historical and cultural meanings might present themselves to us.

The late imperial period presents us with a dizzying array of works—from encyclopedias (leishu 類書) and collectanea (congshu 叢書) to general anthologies

(zongji), often compiled with a clear critical agenda in mind, and reconstituted individual collections (bieji). There are several salient points to be highlighted regarding the transmission of the classical textual legacy in this period. First there is the complex interaction between printing and manuscript. Printing popularized the manuscript copy on which the printed version is based but inadvertently “obscures” other manuscript versions, which could still circulate among more local audiences. Sometimes a printed edition claiming to be based on an old manuscript or an earlier printed edition would go into many reprints and eclipse other versions.57 In the case of Yutai xinyong, it was printed as early as the Northern Song (960-1127), and the earliest current printed editions

57 Wiebke Denecke, Wai-Yee Li, and Xiaofei Tian, eds. The Oxford Handbook of

Classical Chinese Literature (1000 BCE-900CE) (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2017), 271.

26 can be dated to the late Ming (1368-1644). Its oldest datable printed edition from 1540 was based on a manuscript copy purchased at Jinling 金陵 (modern Nanjing). It was largely overshadowed by the 1633 edition claiming to be based on a Southern Song edition put together by Chen Yufu 陳玉父 in 1215. The 1540 recension became widely available in a modern typeset edition only in 2011. It contains nearly 200 poems more than the 1633 version, and many of them might indeed have been interpolated from encyclopedias and collections by the editor himself, the unknown producer of the Jinling manuscript, or during the murky transmission process that had led to the Jinling manuscript. This in some ways is typical of a certain practice in the Ming of augmenting an early collection as much as possible, sometimes changing the text unscrupulously, before putting it in print, resulting in much criticism from scholars in the Qing and modern times.58

58 For studies of various editions of Yutai xinyong, see Liu Yuejin 劉躍進, Yutai xinyong

Yanjiu 玉臺新詠研究, (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2000), 3-42; Wang Jingming 王景鳴,

“Yutai xinyong yu qi banben chutan” 玉台新詠與其版本初探, Zhongguo tushuguan xuehui huibao 中國圖書館學會會報 (2001: 2): 225-29. See also Tan Beifang 談蓓芳,

“Yutai xinyong banben kao — Jian lun cishu de bianzhuan shijian he bianzhe wenti”

《玉臺新詠》版本考——兼論此書的編纂時間和編者問題, Fudan xuebao [Shehui kexue ban] 復旦學報(社會科學版) 4 (2004): 2-16. Relevant discussion can also be found in her “Yutai xinyong banben bukao”《玉臺新詠》版本補考, Shanghai Shifan

There are two major edition systems of Yutai xinyong, the first one is mentioned above as the most widely transmitted Ming woodblock edition produced by a publishing house owned by Zhao Jun 趙均 (1591-1640) in Hanshan 寒山 (in nowadays Suzhou),

Xiaowan tang 小宛堂.59 The second system was reprinted from a manuscript edition and was published by Zheng Xuanfu 鄭玄撫 in Ming Dynasty as well, which contains nearly

200 more poems60 than the Chen Yufu system. The latter system is also called the

“General Edition of the Ming” (明通行本) or “Common Edition” (俗本). These two edition systems evolve into more than thirty different extant editions.61

Prefaces and postfaces attached to each edition meticulously record the process by which the current edition was formed. This process often created a community: literati groups, book collectors, connoisseurs, and epigraphers. They conversed via the media of texts, via this particular anthology, and they cherished the revival of printing culture.62

When it comes to a family business in Late Ming Dynasty, it is a prevalent practice to

Daxue xuebao [Zhexue shehui kexue ban] 上海師範大學學報(哲學社會科學版) 35, no.

1 (2006): 14-24.

59 See Yutai xinyong jianzhu, 4-6.

60 The number of the interpolated poems differs in various editions. See Fu Gang 傅剛,

“Lun Yutai xinyong de bianji tili” 論《玉臺新詠》的編輯體例, in Guoxue yanjiu 國學

研究, 12: 2003, 362, note 12.

61 See Liu Yuejin, Yutai xinyong Yanjiu, 3-42.

62 Fu Gang, “Lun Yutai xinyong de bianji tili”, 350.

28 pass on the publishing house Xiaowan tang and all the book collections to the inheritor, in this case, Zhao Jun inherited all the epigraphs and books collected by Zhao Huanguang

趙宦光 (1559-1625).63 Despite the increasing numbers of imprints resulting from the invention and the development of woodblock printing, there was restricted availability of books in general which is revealed in the nature of the demands imposed by literati and scholar-officials for copies of books. There is abundant evidence about the difficulty early Ming scholars encountered trying to see or acquire imprints of books, forcing them to rely largely on handwritten copies. For instance, up to the mid-sixteenth century, literati readers in the Yangzi delta repeatedly had trouble locating or owning a copy of the Wen xuan even after the fourth round of printing of the work in 1549.64 It even took a wealthy Suzhou collector like Yang Xunji 楊循吉 (1458–1546) years to acquire a complete copy of this anthology. He first transcribed an edition at the National University

(guozijian 國子監) in Beijing, only to discover that this copy was incomplete. He bought a version in the marketplace, but it consisted only of the latter half of the full text.

63 For biographical record of Zhao Huanguang, see J. P. Park, Art by the Book: Painting

Manuals and the Leisure Life in Late Ming China (Washington: University of

Washington Press, 2017), 210. See also Kang-I, Sun Chang, Haun Saussy, and Charles

Yim-tze Kwong, Women Writers of Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and

Criticism (CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 742.

64 Inoue Susumu 井上進, Chūgoku shuppan bunkashi: shomotsu to chi no fūkei 中国出

版文化史：書物と知の風景 (A Cultural History of Chinese Publishing: Books and the

Landscape of Knowledge). (Nagoya: Nagoya daigaku, 2002), 217–218.

Eventually, only after hand-copying the first half from a copy held by his friend Wang

Ao 王鏊 (1450–1524) did he finally put together a complete copy.65

It is probably because of such ongoing shortage of books that many book owners continued earlier habits of lending and sharing books: books were considered so valuable and precious that access to private collections was often restricted. Book collectors repeatedly reminded themselves and their descendants that “to lend books is unfilial,” “to loan a book is stupid,” or “to lend a book is foolish, while to return a [lent] book is also foolish.”66 Some improved access was provided since the mid-Ming by governmental

65 Inoue Susumu, “Zōsho to dokusho” 藏書と讀書 (Book Collecting and Book

Reading), Tōhō gakuhō 東方學報 62: 1990, 417–418.

66 The seal of the scholar-official Tang Yaochen 唐堯臣 (juren 1528), for example, reads exactly “To loan a book is unfilial” 借書不孝; the seal of Shi Dajing 施大經 (ca. 1560–

1610) also contains the phrase “To loan or sell a book is unfilial” 出借鬻為不孝. Fang

1950, 156, quoting Ye Dehui’s Cangshu shiyue 藏書十約, notes that “one fool lends a book, another fool returns it” 借書一痴, 還書一痴; see also Ōuchi Hakugetsu 大内白月,

Shina tenseki shidan 支那典籍史談 (Discussions of the History of Book in China)

(Tokyo: Shorinsha, 1944), 147–148. On these habits of thought and practice about loaning and sharing books, see Nagasawa Kikuya 長澤規矩也, “Shina ni okeru toshokan no tanjō” 支那に於る圖書館の誕生 (The Birth of the Library in China), in Nagasawa

Kikuya chosakushū 長澤規矩也著作集 (Collected Writings of Nagasawa Kikuya), vol.

6, (Tokyo: Kyūjo, 1982), 288–292; Xiao Dongfa 肖東發, 1983. “Yinshuashu faming hou

30 school libraries, circulation libraries, and private libraries of friends, but for Zhao Jun, he strictly followed the no-borrow policy. Yutai xinyong’s Southern Song edition was rare and precious in late Ming, and Zhao Jun produced a woodblock edition based on this

Song edition, and even made improvements, such as strictly applying the bihui 避諱

(avoiding taboo names of emperors) principle and follow the Song printing styles.67 It is one of the most reliable sources available nowadays, but we should bear in mind that, there had been more than half a century, even for people in Song dynasty to have an opportunity to read Yutai xinyong, not to mention the Ming people.

It is not surprising to find disorder in the Zhao Jun Edition, just like that in any of the other extant editions. The disorder of the text had appeared in Chen Yufu’s.

According to Chen’s postface contained in the Zhao Jun Edition, Chen copied texts from three different patchy editions and combined them to make a complete one. These three editions include the Old Capital Edition (舊京本), the Yuzhang Woodblock Edition (豫

de chaoxieben shu” 印刷術發明後的抄寫本書 (Hand-copied Books after the Invention of Printing), Gantu tongxun 贛圖通訊 1983: 3, 56.

67 See Qian Qianyi’s 錢謙益 (1582-1664) postface to Yutai xinyong. The original text is:

《玉臺新詠》宋刻本，出自寒山趙氏，本孝穆在梁時所撰。卷中簡文尚稱皇太子，

元帝稱湘東王，可以考見。今流俗本為俗子矯亂，又增詩幾二百首，賴此本少存。

孝穆舊觀良可寶也。凡古書一經庸人手，紕繆百出，便應付臘車覆瓿，不獨此集

也。錢牧翁跋。 “俗本” in this quote refers to the Zheng Xuanfu Edition.

章刻本) and the Shi Family’s Privately Held Copied Edition (石氏所藏錄本).68 Ueki

Hisayuki points out that Chen had already realized the disorder of the text he copied and kept the interpolated poems in order as they were.69 Among the three editions, the Old

Capital Edition is believed to be an edition produced during the previous Northern Song period, as revealed by its name. In addition to the Old Capital Edition, Ueki observes that there was at least one more edition called the “Mingzhou Edition” (明州本)70 that had been circulated during the Northern Song. According to Ueki, the “Mingzhou Edition” of the Northern Song Dynasty is mentioned in Shao Zhang’s 邵章 (1872-1953) “Xulu” 續

錄 in Zengding Siku jianming mulu biaozhu 增訂四庫簡明目錄標註. Shao Zhang indicates that this edition only retained eight juan out of ten when its wooden printing blocks were repaired in the early Southern Song period (1131-1162).71 In other words,

68 The text of Chen Yufu Edition is not extant except for the postface. See Chen Yufu’s postface in Yutai xinyong jianzhu, 531.

69 Ueki Hisayuki 植木久行, “Maboroshi no Sōhan Gyokudai shin’ei Chin Gyokufu hon wo chūshin toshite —— Gyokudai shin’ei no ryūden (I)” 幻の宋版『玉台新詠』陳玉

父本を中心として ——『玉台新詠』の流傳(I). Chūgoku koten kenkyū 中国古典研

究 26 (1981): 22-45.

70 Mingzhou is modern Ningbo 寧波 in Zhejiang 浙江 Province.

71 See Ueki, “Maboroshi no Sōhan Gyokudai shin’ei Chin Gyokufu hon wo chūshin toshite,” 29.

32 the three editions that Chen Yufu consulted were not the only ones to have survived from the Song Dynasty.

We see the interplay of manuscript and printing culture in Yutai xinyong. One thing we can know for sure is that, neither the edition Song people copied nor the edition reproduced by Ming people is exactly the same as the one compiled during the Six

Dynasties. The reason why we cherish so much and highly regard Song editions is, in a sense, a way of viewing historical archives and artifacts within the so called “best” or

“closest time.” The material of making manuscripts are non-durable and perishable into dust if time passing by more than one century, it approached the limit of what paper can endure. A more common thing about reprinting a manuscript edition is due to the highly unfixed nature of manuscript culture. Each step of reprinting , each person who had access to the original text, enjoy the autonomy to revising and deleting and adding things based on their own taste and own writing skill.72 Zhao Jun’s Xiaowan tang edition of the

Yutai xinyong is by far the most renowned one due to the fact that Zhao Jun’s claim that he consulted and revised based on the Song edition, and he also said that he was loyal to the original edition, rendering a most close to the “original edition” in terms of time.

72 Wiebke Denecke, Wai-Yee Li, and Xiaofei Tian, eds. The Oxford Handbook of

Classical Chinese Literature (1000 BCE-900CE) (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2017), 69.

After its disappearance for almost a century, this anthology resurfaced during Song and

Ming period, which is still a miracle in the book history.73

As mentioned earlier, Chen Yufu’s edition is no longer extant, and it was believed that Zhao Jun’s edition was a revised edition based on Chen’s.74 However, Zhao Jun did not mention the name of the Song edition he used in the preface written to his edition.75

Feng Ban 馮班 (1602-1671), Zhao Jun’s friend, confirms that Zhao Jun’s revision was based on a Song edition in his preface to the Revised Edition of the Fengs (馮氏校本).

He and his brother, Feng Shu 馮舒 (1593-1645), both state that they visited Zhao Jun’s home and duplicated the Song edition there in 1629,76 without mentioning the name of the Song edition either. In addition, Feng Ban reveals that he once borrowed a Song edition for collating purposes in 1649. He points out that there are many mistakes in the

Song edition he borrowed and that the gain and loss of Zhao Jun’s revision are half and

73 Ueki Hisayuki 植木久行, “Maboroshi no Sōhan Gyokudai shin’ei Chin Gyokufu hon wo chūshin toshite —Gyokudai shin’ei no ryūden (I)” 幻の宋版『玉台新詠』陳玉父本

を中心として―『玉台新詠』の流傳(Ⅰ), Chūgoku koten kenkyū 中国古典研究 26

(1981): 27.

74 Ji Rongshu 紀容舒, Yutai xinyong kaoyi 玉臺新詠考異 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1993), 1.

75 Yutai xinyong jianzhu 玉臺新詠箋註, annot. Wu Zhaoyi 吳兆宜 and Cheng Yan 程琰

(Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1985), 532.

76 Ibid., 533; 541.

34 half.77 Interestingly, again, Feng did not reveal the name of this Song edition. We do not know why these famous bibliophiles would not reveal the name of the edition owned by the Zhao family while, especially in the Feng brothers’ case, giving detailed information including names for other editions.78 The postface written by Chen Yufu, which is contained in the extant Zhao Jun Edition, is the only reason that makes one believe that the Song edition on which Zhao based his editing was the Chen Yufu Edition.

Another normative reference some scholars heavily rely on is Yan Shu’s fragmentary Leiyao. According to the meaning of its title, Leiyao is an encyclopedia that collects writings in a condensed manner. Since this book was compiled in the Northern

Song Dynasty (960-1126), Tan Beifang believes that the text of the Yutai xinyong cited in this book is the same as that in Xu Ling’s edition.79 Indeed, Yan Shu lived in the

Northern Song period and what he collected in the Leiyao must be something that was printed or in circulation at that time. However, taking the two Northern Song editions mentioned earlier into consideration, we neither know how many more editions circulated during the Northern Song period, nor do we know which edition Yan cited. Furthermore, even if we knew the edition Yan adopted, we still wouldn’t be able to tell if it was the original edition.

77 Ibid., 534.

78 Ibid., 533-534 and 541-542.

79 Tan Beifang, “Yutai xinyong banben kao — Jian lun cishu de bianzhuan shijian he bianzhe wenti,” 2-16. See also Tan Beifang, “Yutai xinyong banben bukao,” 14-24.

Yet, since we do not have the Yutai xinyong from the sixth century, it is impossible to determine with certainty its original content or the original ordering of that content. More importantly, the Southern Song Edition collated by Chen Yufu was itself based on one manuscript copy and two printed editions, one with a missing page and riddled with errors and the other being only half of the original text as I mentioned earlier.80 The point is that “Song editions” became mythologized because they came from the early stage of the age of printing and were taken to represent the original editions.

The very concept of “original,” however, must be called into question. It is not necessary or even possible to determine which edition is closer to the “original edition,” so we should bear in mind that each edition represents a unique editorial process in literary history.

For the purpose of conducting quantitative study, the edition I adopt in my thesis is based on Zhao Jun’s Xiaowan tang edition, annotated by a Qing scholar, Wu Zhaoyi 吳

兆宜 and edited by Cheng Yan 程琰 during the Qianlong Era 乾隆 (1736-1796). It was published by Beijing Zhonghua shuju in 1985 and became a received edition since then.

The annotations and editorial notes are useful and informative, and it also includes variants and differences in other editions, so I chose this edition as the main primary text for my research.

Editorship of the Yutai xinyong

80 Liu Yuejin, Yutai xinyong yanjiu, 42-43.

Authorship is crucial to literary works. For authorship of individual works,

Stephen Owen opines:

If we think of “authorship” as a property of a text, like a title, then we can see that

in many cases it was something added by inference, just as titles so often were.

We can also see the point at which anonymity came into being as a value in its

own right. A poetic text that simply circulates without a name does not become

“anonymous” until it enters a literary regimen where names are assigned, decided,

and arranged in chronological order.81

Owen asserts that authorship is a property ascribed to a literary text. It reflects an attempt to ground and contextualize that text by assigning its composition to a specific individual.

For anthologies, they are much more complicated than individual’s works. It is noteworthy that the compilers of anthologies usually involved in the process of editing and selecting works. Evidence shows that, by editing literary works, the compiler takes the liberty to adding, omitting and revising the literary works they would include in the anthology, in order to fit their own criteria.82 I would like to use the term “editorship” instead of “authorship” in discussing the possible compiler of Yutai xinyong. As pointed out in the Introduction, viewing the editor as “agency” is a useful point to analyze a

81 Stephen Owen, The making of early Chinese classical poetry. (Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), 7.

82 Wiebke Denecke, Wai-Yee Li, and Xiaofei Tian, eds. The Oxford Handbook of

Classical Chinese Literature (1000 BCE-900CE) (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2017), 69.

37 collection. Gabler writes, “We see the editor as ‘agency’, functionary and guardian of the lifeline link between work (or text) and author.”83 In the case of Yutai xinyong, the disputable editorship could not undermine editor’s function as “agency” to select, revise and transmit the text to readers. However, there are only little evidence that show that it was compiled by the known scholar Xu Ling. The Yutai xinyong is neither included in the

Liang shu 梁書 (Book of Liang) nor the Chen shu 陳書 (Book of Chen), and it was first recorded in the “Jingji zhi” of the Book of Sui 隋書經籍志, and it is attributed to Xu

Ling. Another piece of evidence is an anthology which intended to be as a sequel to the

Yutai xinyong, called the Yutai houji 玉臺后集 (After the Jade Terrace Collection) in ten juans, compiled by Li Kangcheng 李康成 in late Tianbao era 天寶 (742-756) or shortly thereafter. This anthology was evidently patterned after the famous Yutai xinyong, which is also in ten juan. The Yutai houji was a selection of early yuefu poetry and poems written by poets from Li Kangcheng’s contemporary time. Li Kangcheng’s collection is said to be an imitation of Yutai xinyong and have contained 670 works by 209 poets as well, dating from the mid-sixth century to the mid-eighth.84 Although the anthology is no longer extant, scholars have identified and collected eighty-nine of the poems that were included in it, by sixty-one poets, as referred to and quoted in various commentaries and other collections from later times. According to Liu Kezhuang 劉克莊 (1187-1269), a

83 Gabler, Text Genetics in Literary Modernism and other Essays, 121-22.

84 Kang-I Sun Chang, and Stephen Owen, eds. The Cambridge History of Chinese

Literature: To 1375, vol. 1. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 256.

Song poet and commentator, Li Kangcheng’s work selects what Xu Ling has neglected in the Yutai xinyong.85

The editorship of Yutai xinyong has always been “obscure” according to different sources. Because Xu Ling served both the Liang and Chen Dynasties, when appears in several editions, his name was associated with different time period. Moreover, two editions record Xu Yuan’s 徐媛 name instead of Xu Ling’s on the front page, and based on this information Hu Dalei asserts that Yutai xinyong was compiled by Xiao Yi’s wife,

Princess Xu 徐妃 (d. 549).86

There were no clear documentation linking Xiao Gang to the Yutai xinyong before Liu Su’s 劉肅 (fl. 806-820) Da Tang xinyu 大唐新語 (New Anecdotes of the

Great Tang). This book was completed in 807, more than two centuries after Xiao

Gang’s death. In this book, the Yutai xinyong was called Yutai ji 玉臺集 (Collected

Works from a Jade Terrace):87

85 See Liu Kezhuang, Hou cun shihua xuji 後村詩話續集, (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju,

1983), 1: 119. The original text is: 後村劉氏曰：鄭左司子敬家有《玉台後集》，天寶

間李康成所選，自陳後主、隋煬帝、江總、庾信、沈、宋、王、楊、盧、駱而下，

二百九人。詩六百七十首。匯為十卷，與前集等，皆徐陵所遺落者，往往其時諸人

之集尚存。今不能悉錄，姑摘其可存者于后。

86 Hu Dalei 胡大雷, “Yutai xinyong wei Liang Yuan Di Xu fei suo ‘zhuanlu’ kao”《玉

臺新詠》為梁元帝徐妃所“撰录”考, Wenxue pinglun 文學評論 2 (2005): 52-56.

87 Liu Su 劉肅, Da Tang xinyu 大唐新語 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1984), 3.42

Before this, when Emperor Jianwen of Liang (Xiao Gang) was Crown Prince, he

was fond of composing amorous poetry. People living within Liang’s borders

were all converted to write poems in his style. Gradually, this became a custom,

and it was named “Palace Style.” [Emperor Jianwen] modified his style in his late

years, but he was not able to reverse this trend. Therefore, he commanded Xu

Ling to compile the Yutai ji, in order to amplify the style.

先是，梁簡文帝為太子，好作艷詩，境內化之，浸以成俗，謂之宮體。晚年

改作，追之不及，乃令徐陵撰玉臺集，以大其體。88

The Da Tang xinyu collects stories from the “national history” (guoshi 國史)89 of the

Tang Dynasty for the purpose of teaching moral standards. Immediately preceding the above quotation is an anecdote about Emperor Taizong of the Tang:

Emperor Taizong said to his courtiers: “I compose amorous poems for

entertainment.” Yu Shinan 虞世南 (558-638) therefore admonished him:

“Although Your Majesty’s writing is very skillful, the style is not elegant. What

the ruler likes, the ruled follow. Once this kind of writing becomes known, I am

afraid it will grow popular. From now on, please forgive me for not obeying your

imperial order.” Taizong said: “You are so sincere. I adopt and honor your

88 Ibid., 3.41.

89 See Yan Jie 嚴傑, “Tangdai biji dui guoshi de liyong” 唐代筆記對國史的利用,

Wenxian 文獻 3 (2004), 117-131. See also Niu Zhigong 牛致功, “Liu Su yu Da Tang xinyu” 劉肅與《大唐新語》, Shixue 史學 5 (1989): 21-29.

admonition. If courtiers were all like Shinan, I would have no worry in governing

the empire.” Thus Emperor Taizong presented [Yu] fifty bolts of thin silk.

太宗謂侍臣曰：“朕戲作艷詩。” 虞世南便諫曰：“聖作雖工，體制非雅。上

之所好，下必隨之。此文一行，恐致風靡。而今而後，請不奉詔。”太宗

曰：“卿懇誠如此，朕用嘉之。臣皆若世南，天下何憂不理。”乃賜絹五十

疋。90

In the end, Liu Su comments that Yu Shinan’s admonition derived from the anecdote concerning Xiao Gang cited above. For a long time, the Da Tang xinyu was considered the decisive evidence connecting Xiao Gang and the Yutai xinyong. However, the authenticity of this anecdote is questioned by some researchers. Wu Guanwen remarks that the Da Tang xinyu of today is not the original one written by Liu Su in the Tang

Dynasty. She maintains that it is actually a different name for a book called the Tang shishuo xinyu 唐世說新語 (A New Account of Tales of the Age of Tang), which was written in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).91 Wu Guanwen argues that the anecdote

90 Da Tang xinyu, 3.41.

91 Wu Guanwen 吳冠文, “Guanyu jinben Da Tang xinyu de zhenwei wenti” 關於今本

《大唐新語》的真偽問題, Fudan xuebao [Shehui kexue ban] 復旦學報(社會科學版)

1, no. 1 (2004): 22-29. The opposing arguments can be seen in the following papers: Pan

Tingting 潘婷婷, “Jinben Da Tang xinyu fei weishu bian—Yu Wu Guanwen nüshi shangque” 今本《大唐新語》非偽書辯 — 與吳冠文女士商榷, Nanjing Daxue xuebao

[Zhexue, renwen kexue, shehui kexue] 南京大學學報(哲學･人文科學･社会科學) 2

41 concerning Xiao Gang cited above is not reliable.92 Likewise, since there is no supporting evidence found in standard histories such as the Liang shu, Nan shi or Chen shu,

Okamura Shigeru questions the trustworthiness of the anecdote in the Da Tang xinyu. He sees the Da Tang xinyu as a work of fiction containing miscellaneous stories written by an anonymous scholar much later than the Liang and Chen dynasties. Studies of Chinese literary thought have traditionally taken the anecdote in the Da Tang xinyu as their theoretical basis instead of standard histories such as Liang shu and Nan shi, a research procedure Okamura likens to “putting the cart before the horse.” In conclusion, Okamura asserts that all discussions based on the anecdote should be completely ignored.93

(2005): 137-144; Tao Min 陶敏 and Li Dehui 李德輝, “Ye tan jinben Da Tang xinyu de zhenwei wenti” 也談今本《大唐新語》的真偽問題, Shanxi Daxue xuebao [Zhexue shehui kexue ban] 山西大學學報(哲學社会科學版) 30, no. 1 (2007): 91-96. Wu

Guanwen published two more papers defending her previous arguments: Wu Guanwen,

“Zai tan jinben Da Tang xinyu de zhenwei wenti” 再談今本《大唐新語》的真偽問題,

Fudan xuebao [Shehui kexue ban] 復旦學報(社會科學版) 4, no. 4 (2005): 47-52; and

Wu Guanwen, “San tan jinben Da Tang xinyu de zhenwei wenti” 三談今本《大唐新

語》的真偽問題, Fudan xuebao [Shehui kexue ban] 復旦學報(社會科學版) 1, no. 1

(2007): 20-29 and 82.

92 Wu Guanwen, “Guanyu jinben Da Tang xinyu de zhenwei wenti,” 29.

93 Okamura Shigeru 岡村繁, “Monzen to Gyokudai shin’ei” 『文選』と『玉臺新詠』, in Kanda Kiichirō Hakase tsuitō Chūgokugaku ronshū 神田喜一郎博士追悼中國學論

Okamura suspects that the Yutai xinyong was not valued by contemporary literati from the beginning when it was compiled.94 Yao Cha, the first compiler of the Liang shu and Chen shu, was a close friend of both Xiao Gang and Xu Ling. After the fall of the

Liang Dynasty, he served in the court of the Chen with Xu Ling. Although he himself was glorified as the “Master of Writing of the Generation” (一代文宗)95 in the Chen, Xu

Ling highly respected Yao Cha’s literary achievements and conduct.96 If the Yutai xinyong was compiled at Xiao Gang’s command to “amplify the [Palace] style,” the project should be understood as “official,” as it was compiled under the patronage of princely court. It is difficult to understand why there is no mention of Xu Ling’s Yutai xinyong in either the Liang shu or the Chen shu. Huang Wei maintains that it is because the compiler Yao Shilian hid the name of the anthology to protect Xu Ling from being criticized by Tang Confucian scholars, since in the Early Tang period when the Liang shu and the Chen shu were compiled, the political trend of re-establishing Confucianism was in fashion.97 However, this theory is not supported by any direct evidence. Wang Hao

集, ed. Ko Kanda Kiichirō Hakase tsuitō Chūgokugaku ronshū kankōkai 故神田喜一郎

博士追悼中國學論集刊行会 (Tokyo: Nigen sha, 1986), 50-51.

94 Ibid., 50.

95 Chen shu, “Xu Ling” 徐陵, 26.335. See also Nan shi, “Xu Chi” 徐摛, 62.1525.

96 Chen shu, “Yao Cha” 姚察, 27.354

97 Huang Wei 黃威, “Liang shu, Chen shu bu zai Yutai xinyong kao —— Jian lun Tang chu ren duidai Gongti shi de taidu wenti” 《梁書》、《陳書》不載《玉臺新詠》考

43 believes that the Yutai xinyong was compiled by Xiao Yi’s wife Lady Xu, and the reason why this anthology is not mentioned in the Liang shu and Chen shu is because the book was not popular in Liang times due to Lady Xu’s bad reputation.98 Since Sui shu indicates that Xu Ling was the compiler of the Yutai xinyong, Wang’s theory brings us back to the question: Who was the compiler of the Yutai xinyong?

During the Six Dynasties, attribution of an anthology to one prominent figure in the imperial court was a common practice. For instance, Wen xuan was compiled in the

Liang court when Xiao Tong was the crown prince, and it was a collective work of the imperial court. We may find evidence of collective authorship that would become more pronounced in Xiao Tong’s Wen xuan, at least the leading scholar such as Liu Xiaochuo

劉孝綽 (481-539) participated in the process of compiling Wen xuan, as he was one of the members within the inner circle of the Liang court.99 I suggest that this is not only no coincident, but also a reflection of the connection of these literati gatherings to the practice of anthologization in the Southern Dynasties.

— 兼論唐初人對待宮體詩的態度問題, Ha’erbin Xueyuan xuebao 30, no. 12 (2009):

79.

98 Wang Hao 汪浩, “Lun Yutai xinyong yi shu de bianzhuanzhe” 論《玉臺新詠一書的

編撰者》, Guangxi Shifan Xueyuan xuebao [Zhexue shehui kexue ban] 廣西師範學院學

報(哲學社會科學版) 27, no. 1 (2006): 75.

99 David R., Knechtges, and Xiao Tong, Wen Xuan or Selections of Refined Literature,

Volume I: Rhapsodies on Metropolises and Capitals, (New Jersey: Princeton University

Press, 2014), 584-587.

When Jian’an writers are mentioned collectively as a group, as in Cao Pi’s 曹丕

(187-226) “Yu Wu Zhi shu” 與吳質書 (“Letter to Wu Zhi”), there is always reference to group activity, to parties, play, and group composition. We know from many sources that group activity was the setting for much compositional activity and that literary production, particularly poetry, depended not on solitary inspiration but on the imitations, responses, and other activities that were part of the public character of literati life. Shen

Yue’s discussion of the poets Lu Ji 陸機 (261-303) and Pan Yue 潘岳 (247-300) in his

“Xie Lingyun zhuan lun” 謝靈運傳論 (“Postscript to the Life of Xie Lingyun”) mentions two archetypal locations of past literati group activities. He refers to Lu Ji’s and Pan

Yue’s practice of adorning their works with the “sublime resonances of Level Terrace

(Ping tai 平臺) and the lofty tones of Nanpi 南皮.”100 Nanpi was a hunting ground near

Ye and site of the literati outings referred to in Cao Pi’s “Letter to Wu Zhi.” Level

Terrace was constructed in 153 B.C.E. under King Xiao of Liang 梁王 in the Western

Han, who was also known as a book collector. On one occasion, illustrious worthies from all over the country came to celebrate the completion of a road linking the terrace to the king’s palace.101 The Miscellaneous Records of the Western Capital records:

King Xiao of Liang went on an outing to the Hall of Forgetting Sorrow, and asked

each of the assembled scholars there to compose a fu. Mei Sheng composed his

“Willow fu”; Lu Qiaoru composed a “Crane fu”; Gongsun Gui composed a

100 Shen Yue, Song shu 宋书 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 1778.

101 Ban Gu 班固, Han shu 漢書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), 2207-08.

“Spotted Deer fu”; Zou Yang composed a “Wine fu”; Gongsun Sheng composed

a “Moon fu”; Yang Sheng composed a “Wind Break fu”; Han Anguo could not

complete his “Table fu,” so Zou Yang completed it for him. Zou Yang and Han

Anguo were punished by being made to drink three sheng of wine; Mei Sheng

and Lu Qiaoru were each rewarded with five pi of silk.102

梁孝王游於忘憂之館，集諸遊士，使各為賦。枚乘《柳賦》，路喬如《鶴

賦》，公孫詭《文鹿賦》，鄒陽《酒賦》，公孫乘《月賦》，羊勝《屏風

賦》，韓安國作《幾賦》不成，鄒陽代作。鄒陽安國罰酒三升；賜枚乘路

喬如絹，人五匹。

There is little doubt that court belletristic composition in group form existed for hundreds of years prior to the Jian’an, and probably antedated the Level Terrace period as well.

Suzuki shūji identifies nearly all early fu as a court genre practiced under royal patronage, which probably involved group composition activities.103 Although fu continued to occupy a central place in group compositional activities in the Jian’an, historical and textual evidence is insufficient for any precise characterization of such activity for earlier periods. The Miscellaneous Records of the Western Capital was probably not composed before the third century C.E., and Wang Meng’ou has pointed out the similarities between the description in the Miscellaneous Records and descriptions by Jian’an authors of the character of literati group activities in their own era. Thus, the primary text on

102 Liu Xin 劉歆, Xi Jing zaji 西京雜記 (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1991), 4: 3a-5a.

103 Suzuki shūji 鈴木修次, Kan Gi shi no kenkyū 漢魏詩の研究 (Tokyo: Daishūkan,

1967), 505-8.

46 which Suzuki bases his conclusions about the social nature of Former Han fu could easily have been influenced by what was then known about the clearly social character of later

Han fu.104 What I believe to be more significant about Shen Yue’s discussion than the simple facts of the history of literati group activity, though, is the manner in which he closely identifies the literary style of a particular time with a particular group’s practice.

This was a common discursive feature in Shen Yue’s day. In post-Jian’an literary and historical texts, though, we have significant body of documentary evidence of the social character of literati production. The literati group activities described or referred to the time frame within Southern Dynasties court took place over a fairly longer period of time, roughly from the Yongming era 永明 (483-493) to the beginning of Chen Dynasty

陳 (557-589). The nature of these activities was affected by the changing character of interpersonal life over the course of late Southern Dynasties. Famous literati groups are the Eight Companions of Jingling (Jingling bayou 竟陵八友) revolving Xiao Ziliang 蕭

子良 (460-494), and Gaozhai xueshi 高齋學士, a group of court literati revolving Xiao

Gang, which I will discuss in Chapter three regarding literati groups in a more detailed fashion.

Courtly literature in the Liang Dynasty, centering on poetry, seems to have been characterized by patronage and group compositional activities. These activities took place under the patronage of a fairly stable imperial or provincial court at a time when there was no serious challenge to either the stability of the empire or the solidity of hierarchical organization. The sociopolitical character of the Liang court gave their literati groupings

104 Suzuki shūji, Kan Gi shi no kenkyū, 506-9.

47 a different character. In the case of Yutai xinyong, the editors who involved in the actual editing and collecting process were largely influenced by the literary patron, Xiao Gang.

The Southern courts had witnessed massive migration to the south land and by the end of the Liang Dynasty, Xu Ling as a representative of court scholar, was sent to Northern

Dynasties twice. Even if Xu Ling was the actual compiler, the whole anthologizing process of the Yutai xinyong was more likely to be an “active procedure rather than a passive copying of received manuscripts” like Owen asserts,105 and would have been almost impossible to complete by only one court scholar. From one extant anthology compiled during the same period as Yutai xinyong, Wen xuan, we know that it was attributing an anthology to only one person instead of all the compilers engaged in the production was a practice at the time. For Wen xuan, we now have evidence to support that it was compiled by not only Xiao Tong, but also scholar officials in the Liang court at that time.106 In a Japenese Buddhist Monk, Kūkai’s 空海 Bunkō hifuron 文鏡秘府論

(Essays from the Secret Repository of the Literary Mirror), it cites an unnamed authority that says that Xiao Tong, Liu Xiaochuo and other scholars compiled Wen xuan.107 The

Song dynasty catalogue, Zhongxing guange shumu 中興館書目 compiled 1178, mentions

105 Stephen Owen, The making of early Chinese classical poetry, 7.

106 Knechtges, David R., and Tong Xiao, Wen Xuan or Selections of Refined Literature,

Volume I: Rhapsodies on Metropolises and Capitals, (New Jersey: Princeton University

Press, 2014), 584-587.

107 Kūkai 空海, Bunkō hifuron 文鏡秘府論 (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1975),

163.

Xiao Tong’s co-compilers as “He Xun (d. ca. 518), and others.”108 Most modern scholars believe that it is very likely that Liu Xiaochuo participated in the compilation of the Wen xuan. Shimizu Yoshio 清水凱夫 has strenuously argued that Liu Xiaochuo is the primary compiler.109 It is unlikely that He Xun was involved in the project, for he died in 518 or

519, before the compilation of the Wen xuan began. Based on what we now know about

Wen xuan, we cannot exclude the possibility that Yutai xinyong was accomplished by multiple compilers. It is also plausible to assert that Xu Ling was but one of the compilers to this anthology and one of the active participants in Xiao Gang’s courtly literary activities.

There is one more piece of evidence to support the theory that this project was not completed at one time, and it was a prolonged compilation that continued into the Chen

Dynasty. The inclusion of Yu Xin’s 庾信 (513-581) poems that were written after he went to Northern court is likely the result of the visit of Xu Ling’s son Xu Bao 徐報. Yu

Xin came from a rich and noble family in present-day Henan. His father was the poet Yu

Jianwu 庾肩吾 (487-551). He grew up in the South, then under the rule of the Liang dynasty, and speedily achieved the reputation of being the most accomplished poet of his time. When in 552, Hou Jing rebelled and seized the capital Jiankang 建康 (Nanjing), Yu

108 Cited in Wang Yinglin 王應麟, Yuhai 玉海 (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1987),

54.8b.

109 Shimizu Yoshio 清水凱夫, “Monzen senja kō—Shōmei taishi to Ryū Kōshaku” 文選

撰者考—昭明太子と劉孝綽, Gakurin 學林 (1984: 3): 46-64.

49 fled with the court to Jiangling, in Hubei. [footnote: your source for the historical narrative here!!] He was then sent as an emissary to the capital of the Western Wei in

Chang’an. But while he was there the Wei invaded the South, sacked Jiangling, and brought thousands of prisoners back with them to Chang’an, among them many of Yu’s acquaintances. Shortly after this, in 557, the enfeebled Liang dynasty was replaced by the

Chen, while the Western Wei itself gave way to the Northern Zhou. From then on Yu was left stranded at an alien court, with no hope of ever returning home again.110 In Yu Xin’s individual anthology, there is one poem titled “Xu Bao shi lai zhide yijian” 徐報使來止

得一見. This is a piece of evidence to prove that Xu Ling has access to Yu Xin’s work after Hou Jing’s rebellion.111 Xu Bao went to the Northern court in Chen Dynasty, and it is likely that he collected Yu Xin’s works and brought them back to Xu Ling. Yu Xin also wrote “A poem to Xu Ling” 寄徐陵詩:

故人倘思我 If my old friend, you are still thinking about me,

及此平生時 You should seize the moment as right now.

110 For biographical studies on Yu Xin, see Xu Donghai 許東海, Yu Xin shengping ji qi fu zhi yanjiu 庾信生平及其賦之研究 (Taipei: Wenshizhe chubanshe, 1984), 28-56. See also Wang Zeyuan 王澤遠, “Ronggui yishi xiaose pingsheng—Yu Xin shengping ji sixiang shuping” 榮貴一時蕭瑟平生——庾信生平及思想述評, Qiqihar shifan daxue xuebao 齊齊哈爾大學學報 (1992: 5): 73-79.

111 See Ji Ding 吉定, “Yu Xin ‘Xu Bao shi lai zhide yijian’ xiaokao” 《庾信〈徐報使來

止得一見〉小考》in Wenxue yichan 文學遺產, 1995:5, 24-30.

莫待山陽路 Please do not wait until you leave for Shan Yang,

空聞吹笛悲 Only the sound of flute will be heard and sorrow will be

left.

Shan Yang is the place Ji Kang used to live, and the sound of the flute is mentioned by

Xiang Xiu 向秀 (227-272) to memorize Ji Kang after his tragic death. The usage of allusion of Xiang Xiu’s “Sijiu fu” 思舊賦 is intriguing in this poem, and it is regarded as a poem written by Yu Xin in his late age. The urging note of “please do not wait” expresses the feeling of the poet, who hoped his name would be remembered by his dearest friend. Only through the transmission of his own work, can he be remembered by the time and therefore achieve eternity. This poem is possible to be a petition to Xu Ling, so that Yu Xin’s work can be included in the anthology. Qian Zhongshu commented that this poem is one of the most aged and mature piece of works of Yu Xin.112

Conclusion

We tend to view an anthology as “one entity,” that emerged at “one time.” This might be true for some individual anthologies (bieji), but not for an anthology like Yutai xinyong. By examining the different editions of the work, I attempted to approach the scene of its compilation, concluding that it was probably the product of multiple compilers. Although it is impossible to trace back to all the court scholars who had engaged in the editing of Yutai xinyong, based on extant examples from the Southern

112 See Qian Zhongshu, Tan yi lu 談藝錄 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1984), 300. The original text is “沉挚質勁，語少意永，殆集中最’老成’者矣.”

Dynasties, particularly the Wen xuan, I deduced that the Yutai xinyong was compiled by more than one compiler. Furthermore, I also offered speculation as to why Xiao Gang, the patron behind the compilation, was not directly acknowledged in the anthology.

Chapter Two

Organization and Selection Criteria of Poems

This chapter argues that the Yutai xinyong has no overall coherence in its organization and its criteria for poem selection, in contrary to the common view that the ten juan of the anthology is one unified collection devoted to the Palace Style Poetry.

This commonly held view is reflected in, for example, Paul Rouzer’s comment that there is “a sophisticated and subtly erotic genre of verse usually termed ‘Palace Style

Poetry’…. Such verse is now found primarily in the New Verses from the Jade Terrace anthology.”113

There are two observations that we can make about this anthology. First, from the first to the sixth juan, they include works written exclusively by authors who died before

Liang Dynasty, and they are arranged according to the death dates of these authors. The seventh juan and eighth juan, however, select works written by contemporary writers, and are arranged based on these writers’ official ranks. Such a difference has been noted by the Japanese scholar Kōzen Hiroshi 興膳宏. He remarks that the poets in the seventh and eighth juan of the Yutai xinyong were also listed as the compilers in the preface of the Buddhist encyclopedia, Fabao lianbi 法寶聯璧 (Linked Jades of Dharma Treasures),

113 Paul Rouzer, Writing Another’s Dream: The Poetry of Wen Tingyun (Stanford:

Stanford University Press. 1993), 69.

53 and that the order of their names were the same.114 Kōzen also infers that these poets were alive at the time of the compilation of the Yutai xinyong.115 I agree with Kōzen’s points on the approximate compilation date of the seventh and eighth juan of Yutai xinyong.

Second, there is no clear overarching selection criteria in the Yutai xinyong. This lack of discernable criteria might be because the anthology as we know it today is the product of different editorial hands at different points in time and space. Based on these observations, I propose that if there is any coherence in Yutai xinyong, it is only a partial and divided one. In other words, there is only “internal coherence” among several juan that are closely connected. What does the lack of “overall coherence” suggest about the nature, that is, the editorship as well as the selection of poetry, of Yutai xinyong?

“Palace Style Poetry” and Yutai xinyong

Xiao Gang is often regarded as the most important early promoter and author of

Palace Style Poetry. Of all the poems collected in Yutai xinyong, over 100 were written by Xiao Gang, by far the largest contribution by a single author. Scholars who argue that

Yutai xinyong is an anthology of Palace Style Poetry based their argument on the fact that such a large number of Xiao Gang’s poems are selected in this anthology. But this point of view is largely biased, as Xiao Gang’s personal interests and practices of Palace Style

114 Kōzen Hiroshi 興膳宏, “Gyokudai shin’ei seiritsu kō” 玉臺新詠成立考, Tōhōgaku

東方學 62 (1982): 58-73.

115 Ibid., 58-73.

Poetry does not nessasarily lead to the conclusion that Yutai xinyong as a collection of

Gongti shi.

Here, I trace back the origin of Palace Style Poetry through historical records. The root of “Palace Style” poetry can be sought back in the Yongming 永明 Era (483-493) of the previous dynasty, the Qi 齊 (479-502). The poetic style named after this era, the

Yongming Style, is characterized by its ornate but smooth diction, as well as by the tonal prosody newly proposed by Zhou Yong 周颙 (d. 485),116 Shen Yue 沈約 (441-513) and their fellow poets, as reflected in this account in the Liang shu:

齊永明中，文士王融、謝朓、沈約文章始用四聲，以為新變。至是轉拘聲

韻，彌尚麗靡，復踰於往時。

Back in the mid-Yongming Era of the Qi Dynasty, the scholars Wang Rong (467-

493), Xie Tiao (464-499) and Shen Yue began to use the four tones to compose

literary writings.117 They regarded this as “xinbian”. By the time when Taizong

(Xiao Gang) became Crown Prince, he and his fellow scholars started to adhere to

sound and rhyme. They valued magnificence and richness [in verse writing] more

than in the past.118

116 Zhou Yong was Xu Chi’s father-in-law.

117 For scholarship concerning the tonal prosody of Yongming Style in English, see

Meow Hui Goh’s Sound and Sight: Poetry and Courtier Culture in the Yongming Era

(483-493) (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press), 2010.

118 Liang shu, “Wenxue shang” 文學上, 49.690. See also Nan shi, “Yu Jianwu” 庾肩吾,

50.1247.

Although the name “Palace Style” emerged after Xiao Gang became Crown

Prince, the practice of this style of poetry had begun long before that. Xiao Gang’s interest and taste in Palace Style Poetry were heavily influenced by his court advisors, Xu

Chi 徐摛 (474-551) and Yu Jianwu 庾肩吾 (487-551). They both entered Xiao Gang’s court and served as the prince’s tutors when Gang was still a young boy.119 Xu Chi himself had a predilection for the new style in which the Palace Style Poetry was written and passed his influence on at Xiao Gang’s court.120 The Liang shu offers this account:

At an early age, Xu Chi was fond of study. By the time he was an adult, he had

read the classics and histories in their entirety. In literary composition he went in

for innovation and did not restrict himself to the old forms.... His style of

composition was very distinctive. The entire Eastern Palace was captivated by it

and strove to emulate it. Such writing was designated “palace style” by

contemporaries.121

119 For Xu Chi’s biography, see Liang shu, 30.446-448 and Nan shi, 62.1521-1522. For

Yu Jianwu’s biography, see Liang shu 43.690-692 and Nan shi 50.1246-1248.

120 As Xiao Gang’s literary mentor, Xu Chi obviously had tremendous influence in the formation of Xiao Gang’s literary style and taste. Unfortunately, very little of Xu Chi’s poems has survived. Xian Qin Han Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi 先秦漢魏晉南北朝詩, ed.

Lu Qinli 逯欽立 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), contains only six poems by him.

121 John Marney, Liang Jien-wen ti 梁簡文帝 (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1976), 143-44.

摛幼而好學, 及長, 遍覽經史。屬文好為新變, 不拘舊體……摛文體既別, 春

坊盡學之, “宮體”之號, 自斯而起。122

Xu Chi’s influence on Xiao Gang was revealed by Xiao himself, who said that he had become fascinated with poetic writing at a tender age.123 Although the term “xinbian” 新

變 in the citations above is a keyword for understanding the nature of the Palace Style, its meaning has not been closely inspected. As a compound word, xinbian first appeared in

Xiao Zixian’s 蕭子顯 (ca. 487-537) Nan Qi shu 南齊書: “In the case of writing, the most troublesome aspects are mediocrity and oldness. If there is no xinbian, it is impossible to surpass the masters.” 在乎文章，彌患凡舊。若無新變，不能代雄.124 The term

“xinbian” as Xiao Zixian used it is also found in the Liang shu accounted, cited above, about the innovative Yongming style, which employed tonal prosody. After examining the structure of the phrases that contain both of the word xin and the word bian, I surmise that the term xinbian is very likely an abbreviation of the terms such as “new sounds and variant tunes” (xinsheng bianqu 新聲變曲) and “new poems and variant sounds” (xinshi biansheng 新詩變聲). The two syllables meaning “new” (xin 新) and “variant” (bian 變)

122 Liang shu 30.446-7.

123 Xiao Gang wrote “余七歲有詩癖，長而不倦” (When I was seven years old, I became fascinated with poetic writing, and this enthusiasm did not fade away when I grow older.) See Liang shu, “Jianwen di” 簡文帝, 4.109.

124 Xiao Zixian 蕭子顯, “Wenxue” 文學 in Nan Qi shu 南齊書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1972), 52.908.

57 in these terms were combined and formed the term xinbian, which describes the common nature of various artistic works that are deemed “new and unique.” In that sense, xinbian is often a noun meaning “innovation” in historical usage.

Palace Style, like the Yongming Style, was considered as a form of xinbian, of which Marney and Knechtges render as “innovation,”125 in the Liang and Chen time. For a long time, Palace Style Poetry was criticized as “decadent,” but its flowery diction, tonal intricacy, refined syntax, and “an entirely new perception of the phenomenal world”126 were in fact intensely innovative, reflecting the remarkable achievements of

Xiao Gang and his fellow poets.

Yutai xinyong does include Palace Style Poetry, the “new” style of poetry composed and promoted by Xiao Gang and the poets surrounding him, especially in the seventh and eighth juan, but it clearly also includes pre-Liang poems, which are the exclusive focus of the first to sixth juan. Furthermore, from the perspective of compilation, there is no apparent selection criteria that indicates that the anthology was meant to collect one specific type of work. As it will become clear later in this chapter,

Yutai xinyong in fact includes poems of diverse styles and subgenres, some of which are distinctively different from “poems about palace ladies,” of which some have claimed to be the core of the anthology.

125 John Marney, Liang Chien-wen Ti, 82 and 98. See also Knechtges, Wen xuan or

Selections of Refined Literature, 1.11.

126 Xiaofei Tian, Beacon Fire and Shooting Star, 211-59.

Organization of Yutai xinyong

For most of the extant editions, there are ten juan in the Yutai xinyong, which make it a rather small collection compared to other contemporaneous anthologies. To provide a comparative lens from which to understand how Yutai xinyong is different, we need to trace the general practice of anthologization in the early medieval period. Thanks to the “Jingji zhi” 經籍志 (“Bibliographical Treatise”) of the Sui shu 隋書 (History of

Sui), which was compiled in the seventh century, we know the names of a large number of anthologies from the Wei, Jin, Southern and Nothern Dynasties 魏晉南北朝 (220-

589). According to this treatise, 107 anthologies in 2,213 juan were still extant in the seventh century. The treatise also mentions another 142 anthologies in 3,011 juan that were lost in the destruction of libraries that took place at the end of the sixth century.127

Only a small number of works listed in this catalogue have survived to the present day.128

Virtually all of the anthologies listed in the “Jingji zhi” have long been long lost.

However, we can still find partial information for some anthologies. The following table shows the amount of literary anthologization recorded in the bibliographic treatise of the

Sui shu.129

127 Wei Zheng 魏徵, Sui shu 隋書 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1997), 35.1089.

128 Ibid., 32.907.

129 Ibid., 35.1105-99.

In its introduction to the anthology section of the treatise, the Sui shu “jing ji zhi” includes the development of the zongji 總集, which literally means “comprehensive collection” or “general anthology.” One of the most important general anthologies in the early medievial period is the Wenzhang liubie ji 文章流別集 (Collection of Writings

Divided by Genre) compiled by Zhi Yu 摯虞 (d. 311).130 Zhi Yu was a famous historian, scholar, and writer of the Western Jin. Zhi Yu’s anthology was presumably large. The original version consisted of sixty juan.131 However, the most common edition that was circulated from the Tang through Song, when the Wenzhang liubie ji in its original form appeared to have been lost , was in thirty juan.132 Although the anthology itself does not

130 See Guo Shaoyu 郭紹虞, Zhongguo lidai wen lun xuan 中國歷代文論選 (Shanghai:

Guji chubanshe, 2001), 1.190-205.

131 Here, I am using the number of juan only to provide a rough indication of the size of the work. As we know, there is no fixed size for a juan in a historical work.

132 See Yu Shiling 俞士玲, Xi Jin wenxue kaolun 西晉文學考論 (Nanjing: Nanjing

University Press, 2008), 188-201. Is this source for the statement “This is the same size as the original version of the Wen xuan”? You can revise this statement and add it in the footnote here but indicate that having the same number of juan does not necessarily mean having the same size.

60 survive, we can still know about its scope and nature from the “Lun” 論 (“Treatise”) written by Zhi Yu, which is extant. From what we know, Zhi Yu arranged the works by genre, the names of which include: (1) song 頌 (eulogy); (2) fu 賦 (exposition or rhapsody); (3) shi 詩 (poetry); (4) qi 七 (sevens); (5) zhen 箴 (admonition); (6) lei 誄

(dirge); (7) ai ci 哀辭 (lament); (8) ai ce 哀策 (laments for members of the imperial family); (9) ming 銘 (inscription); (10) bei 碑 (epitaph, stele inscription); (11) she lun 設

論, (hypothetical disquisition); (12) shu 述 or 述贊 (evaluations or appraisals from the histories); (13) tu chen 圖讖 (prognostication texts). Since the “Treatise” is not complete, it is possible that there were even more genres than those given here.133

The Wen xuan follows the arrangement methodology adopted by Zhi Yu. It was compiled at the court of the Liang prince Xiao Tong, Xiao Gang’s elder brother, and it is the earliest extant Chinese anthology arranged by genre. It contains 761 pieces of prose and verse by 130 writers, covering from the late Zhou 周 (11 Century BC-256 BC) to the

Liang Dynasty (502-557). The Wen xuan includes masterpieces, or, in David Knechtges’s word, “refined literature” of early China in thirty-seven different genres.134 Xiao Tong arranged the compositions within each genre in chronological order. The similarity

133 See Zhi Yu 摯虞, “Wenzhang liubie lun” 文章流別論, Guo Shaoyu 郭紹虞, ed.

Zhongguo lidai wenlun xuan 中國歷代文論選 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe,

2001), 1.191.

134 David R. Knechtges, Wen Xuan or Selections of Refined Literature, Volume I:

Rhapsodies on Metropolises and Capitals, 1.

61 between Zhi Yu’s arrangement and Xiao Tong’s offers a “canonical” form indicative of the general practice of anthologization during this period and from which the uniqueness of Yutai xinyong can be glean.

Unlike Wenzhang liubie ji and Wen xuan, Yutai xinyong does not follow a genre- based organization; in fact, it does not have a clearly discernible organizational principle that binds all its different juan together. It is, in this sense, an unorthodox anthology.

From the first juan to the sixth juan of Yutai xinyong, only works attributed to poets who died before the Liang Dynasty are selected. The organization of the first six juan strictly follows the chronological order of the author’s death dates. The last two juan, ninth and tenth, are also organized based on this principle, with some rare exceptions.135 Questions arise when we look into the seventh and eighth juan. Since we know almost all the biographical dates of these authors included in these two juan, we can see that they are not arranged chronologically by author’s dates. As mentioned earlier, Kōzen Hiroshi notes that the names of the poets that appear in the Yutai xinyong also appear in the list of compilers in the preface to Fabao lianbi, which was written by Xiao Yi 蕭繹 (508-555),

Xiao Gang’s younger brother. Xiao Yi wrote the preface in the sixth year of the Zhong-

Datong Era 中大通 (534) when the Fabao lianbi was completed.136 At the end of the preface, Xiao Yi gave an account of the names, official titles and ages of the thirty-seven

135 For more detailed discussion on organization of the ninth and tenth juan, see Liu

Yuejin 劉躍進, Yutai xinyong Yanjiu 玉臺新詠研究, (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2000),

97-99.

136 Nan shi, “Lu Gao zi Zhao” 陸杲子罩, 48.1205.

62 compilers137 and listed them in the order of their current official rank from high to low.

Kōzen compares the sequence of Xiao Yi’s list to that in the seventh and eighth juan of the Yutai xinyong, remarking that the six poets in the seventh and eighth juan who were on both lists were put in the same sequence as that found in Xiao Yi’s preface. These six poets are: Xiao Yi, Xiao Zixian 萧子顯 (487-537), Liu Zun 劉遵 (?-535), Wang Xun 王

訓 (511-536), Yu Jianwu, Liu Xiaowei 劉孝威 (496-549). Kōzen thereupon infers that the Yutai xinyong was very likely compiled as a whole at a time close to when Xiao Yi’s preface was written, which should be around the sixth year of the Zhong-Datong Era, that is, 534. By connecting it to Fabao lianbi, Kōzen opines that Yutai xinyong could have been compiled only between 533 and 535—that is, very close to the time when Xiao

Gang succeeded his brother Xiao Tong to become the crown prince of Liang (the exact year was 531).138 This could explain why Xiao Gang did not put his own name on the

Yutai xinyong, since it followed closely to his brother’s death, even though it was a common practice to attribute a collective work to the name of the commissioner. The appointment of Xiao Gang as Crown Prince was unique in the history of the Southern

Dynasties because it violated tradition, which decreed that the first son and then the first

137 Xiao Yi’s name also appears on the list but he did not participate in the project of compilation. See “Fabao lianbi xu” 法寶聯璧序 in Quan Shanggu Sandai Qin Han

Sanguo Liuchao wen 全上古三代秦漢三國六朝文, comp. Yan Kejun 嚴可均 (1762-

1843) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1958), 3052.

138 Kōzen Hiroshi 興膳宏, “玉臺新詠成立考,” Tōhōgaku 東方學 62 (1982): 58-73.

63 grandson (from the dead heir) should be established as the heir.139 By the time he was appointed as the Crown Prince, the late Crown Prince, Xiao Tong’s first son Xiao Huan

蕭歡 (d. 541) was alive and eligible. Okabe Takeshi maintains that the reason for Xiao

Gang’s establishment was the crucial political role the Crown Prince played in the imperial government at the time. In the Southern Dynasties, Okabe asserts, a Crown

Prince carried heavy duties on behalf of an emperor, especially during the emperor’s absence. During his long peaceful regime, Emperor Wu heavily relied on Crown Prince

Zhaoming to run the empire, and Xiao Gang was not an exception either. Okabe concludes that political needs overrode the ritual tradition in Xiao Gang’s case.140 As the newly crowned prince, Xiao Gang could not afford the criticism against him and his literary practice, especially after the disapproval of Gongti shi expressed by Emperor

139 Nan shi, “Liang Wu Di zhuzi” 梁武帝諸子, 53.1328.

140 Okabe Takeshi 岡部毅史, “Ryō Kanbun Tei rittaishi zenya — Nanchō kōtaishi no rekishiteki chii ni kansuru ichi kōsatsu” 梁簡文帝立太子前夜—南朝皇太子の歴史的

位置に関する一考察, Shigaku zasshi 私学雑誌 118-1 (2009): 1-33.

Wu.141 Xu Chi, who had never been apart from Xiao Gang since Xiao was seven years old, was sent away to Xin’an Commandery in the third year of the Zhong-Datong Era.142

141 See Liang shu, “Xu Chi” 徐摛, 30.447. See also Nan shi, “Xu Chi” 徐摛, 62.1521.

The original text is: 王入為皇太子， ...... 摛文體既別，春坊盡學之，“宮體”之號，

自斯而起。高祖聞之怒，召摛加讓，及見，應對明敏，辭義可觀，高祖意釋。因問

五經大義，次問歷代史及百家雜說，末論釋教。摛商較縱橫，應答如響，高祖甚加

歎異，更被親狎，寵遇日隆。領軍朱异不說，謂所親曰：“徐叟出入兩宮，漸來逼

我，須早為之所。”遂承間白高祖曰：“摛年老，又愛泉石，意在一郡，以自怡

養。”高祖謂摛欲之，乃召摛曰：“新安大好山水，任昉等並經為之，卿為我臥治

此郡。”中大通三年，遂出為新安太守。(The prince entered [the capital] and became

Crown Prince, .... Since [Xu] Chi’s writing style was distinctive, people in the Crown

Prince’s residence all imitated it. The name “Palace Style” originally referred to his style, and has been used ever since. Emperor Wu was furious after he heard of it. He summoned [Xu] Chi in order to reprimand him. When they met, Chi responded to the emperor’s questions clearly and promptly. His expressions and ideas were worthy of regard. Emperor Wu felt relieved. He thereupon asked Chi about the general meaning of the Five Classics. Next, he asked about the history of dynasties in the past and miscellaneous doctrines of various schools. In the end, they discussed Buddhism. Chi’s answers were profound and inclusive; his responses were like an echo. Emperor Wu was stunned and highly praised him. They became even closer. Chi was treated as a favorite more and more day by day. The Commandant, Zhu Yi 朱異 (483-549), was not happy.

Kōzen’s theory is not definitive. From the sequence of the poets cited in Kōzen’s theory, Liu Yuejin conjectures that the text Kōzen adopts is Chen Yufu’s Song edition

(1215) reprinted by Zhao Jun of Hanshan in the sixth year of the Congzhen Era of the

Ming Dynasty, that is, 1633. As discussed in the first chapter, there are two different edition systems of the Yutai xinyong, the first one is based on Chen Yufu’s edition, and the second, is Zheng Xuanfu’s “General Edition of the Ming” 明通行本. Liu Yuejin considers that the number of poems in the Chen Yufu system is closer to Xu Ling’s original edition, whereas the arrangement of poets in the Zheng Xuanfu system seems to be more reasonable .143 In the Zheng Xuanfu Edition, poems written by the Liang poets

(including members of the imperial family of the Liang and the Liang courtiers) are placed from the fifth juan and the sequence of the poets starts from Emperor Wu,

He said to his close friend: “Old man Xu is in and out of the Two Palaces [where

Emperor Wu lives]. This puts more and more pressure on me. I should find a place for him before itis too late.” He thereupon took a chance to speak to Emperor Wu: “Chi is in his old age. Moreover, he likes streams and rocks. He is intent on residing in only one commandery, so he can enjoy a relaxing life.” Emperor Wu thought that was what Chi wanted. He then summoned Chi and said “Xin’an has a beautiful landscape. Ren Fang

(460-508) and the like used to govern there. You may leisurely administer it for me.” In the third year of the Zhong-Datong Era, [Xu] then was sent away to become Governor of

Xin’an.)

142 Liang shu, “Xu Chi” 徐摛, 30.447. See also Nan shi, “Xu Chi” 徐摛, 62.1521.

143 Liu Yuejin, Yutai xinyong yanjiu, 60.

66 followed by crown prince, princes and Liang courtiers. In contrast, in the Chen Yufu system, the Liang poets’ poems are placed in the fifth and the sixth juan, which include

Liang courtiers, the seventh juan, which include members of the imperial family of the

Liang, and the eighth juan, which, again, includeLiang courtiers. Although Jiang Yan 江

淹 (444-505), Qiu Chi 邱遲 (464-508), Shen Yue and Liu Yun 劉惲 (n.d.) died before

Emperor Wu of Liang, Liu Yuejin claims that their names should still be placed after the emperor’s as the sequence shown in the Zheng Xuanfu group, because it was a “general rule” (tongli 通例).144 However, Ji Rongshu 紀容舒 (1685-1764) points out that the sequence placing the monarch’s poems between courtiers’ was not a mistake but a formal tradition since the Han Dynasty. In contrast, the so-called “general rule” actually started from Xu Jian’s 徐堅 (659-729) Chuxue ji 初學記 in the Tang Dynasty, and the old- fashioned sequence is not something that later generations could forge.145 Fu Gang acknowledges that the “general rule” applied to the arrangement in the group of the

144 Liu Yuejin, Yutai xinyong yanjiu, 76.

145 See “Yutai xinyong kaoyi zhongmu 玉臺新詠考異總目, juan 7” (page 8) in Ji

Rongshu 紀容舒, Yutai xinyong kaoyi 玉臺新詠考異, in Congshu jicheng chubian 叢書

集成初編, ed. Wang Yunwu 王雲五 (Changsha: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1937). See also

Ueki Hisayuki 植木久行, “Min dai tsūkō Gyokudai shin’ei bon no kaidai” 明代通行

『玉台新詠』本の解題, in Obi Hakase koki kinen Chūgokugaku ronshū 小尾博士古稀

記念中国學論集, ed. Obi Hakase koki kinen jigyōkai 小尾博士古稀記念事業会

(Tokyo: Kyuko shoin, 1983), 335.

Zheng Xuanfu Edition146 seems more reasonable; however, this is actually a piece of evidence of subsequent modification. In terms of editorial arrangement, since the sequence of poets’ deaths as seen in the Chen Yufu Edition is seldom seen in anthologies, while the arrangement following the “general rule” is more popular, Fu argues, it is unthinkable that someone would modify a more “reasonable” (feichang heli de 非常合理

的) arrangement to something that is rare, not to mention the many flaws found in the text of the Zheng editions.147

One piece of evidence Liu Yuejin brings up to oppose Kōzen’s theory that Yutai xinyong “could have been compiled only between 533 and 535” is Liu Xiaochuo’s poem,

“Yuan Guangzhou Jingzhong zuo jian guji yishou” 元廣州景仲座見故姬一首 (“Met A

Familiar Singing Girl at the Banquet Held by the Regional Inspector of Guangzhou, Yuan

Jingzhong”). Liu’s argument can be summarized as follows:

1) Yuan Jingzhong 元景仲 (d. 549) was appointed Regional Inspector of

Guangzhou 廣州刺史 in the third year of the Zhong-Datong Era (531).

2) The third year of the Zhong-Datong Era (531) when Yuan was appointed

Regional Inspector of Guangzhou was the year when Liu Xiaochuo ended his

mourning period and was transferred to Xiao Yi’s princedom. Therefore, Liu was

not in the capital and he was not able to write this poem that year.

146 For the examination in his “Lun Yutai xinyong de bianji tili” 論《玉臺新詠》的編輯

體例, Fu Gang adopts the Xu Xuemo Woodblock Edition 徐學謨刻本 to represent the group of Zhen Xuanfu Edition.

147 Fu Gang, “Lun Yutai xinyong de bianji tili,” 355.

3) Yuan returned to the capital in the second year of the Datong Era (536) because

of his father’s death. His mourning period148 should end after the fourth year of

the Datong Era (538). During the mourning period, Yuan was not allowed to host

parties, not to mention inviting entertaining girls to the parties.

Based on the arguments summarized above, Liu Yuejin concludes that this poem must be composed after the fourth year of the Datong Era (538). In this case, Liu questions, how can one explain the placement of Xiao Zixian’s poem in the eighth juan149 if poets in this scroll were all alive when Yutai xinyong was compiled as Kōzen maintains. For Xiao

Zixian died in the third year of the Datong Era (537).150

Liu Yuejin’s argument is debatable because the third year of the Zhong-Datong

Era (531) is not the only year Yuan Jingzhong was appointed to the position of Regional

Inspector of Guangzhou. According to the Liang shu, Yuan was appointed to the same position in the sixth year of the Putong 普通 Era (525), soon after his father Yuan Faseng

元法僧 (454-536) surrendered to the Liang after Xiao Gang’s military campaign against the north. The appointment took place on the fourth day of the third month (April 12) in

148 The mourning period in the Liang Dynasty was 27 months. See Okamura Shigeru 岡

村繁, “Monzen hensan no jittai to hensan tōshō no Monzen hyōka” 『文選』編纂の実態

と編纂當初の『文選』評價, Nihon Chūgoku gakkai hō 日本中国学会報 38 (1986):

144.

149 Xiao Zixian’s poem is located at the first place in juan 8. See Yutai xinyong jianzhu,

324. For his year of death, see Liang shu, “Xiao Zixian” 蕭子顯, juan 35, 512.

150 For Liu Yuejin’s argument, see his Yutai xinyong yanjiu, 80.

525.151 This entry provides another possibility for the composition date of the poem of which Liu Yuejin questions.

Liu Xiaochuo, who wrote the poem, was Crown Prince Zhaoming’s favorite courtier and served in the Eastern Palace for a long time. In the year 525, he was suspended from his official postion, and Liu was then replaced by his old friend Dao Qia

到洽 (477-527). He was accused of bringing his concubine to his official residence while leaving his mother behind in his private residence.152 There is no mention of how long this suspension lasted. Since Dao Qia died two years later and the royal family including

Emperor Wu and Xiao Yi all showed their sympathy to Liu, it is very likely that he was restored soon after Dao’s death. In any case, during the suspension, Liu Xiaochuo stayed in the capital and he was often invited to Emperor Wu’s banquets. That means there was nothing keeping Liu away from parties and banquets during his suspension period. The year of 525 is more likely the year in which the questioned poem, “Met A Familiar Girl at the Banquet Held by the Regional Inspector of Guangzhou, Yuan Jingzhong,” was composed, likely at one of the banquets held by Yuan Jingzhong. The banquet was probably Yuan’s farewell party before his departure for Guangzhou. [footnote: source for this speculation?] From this point of view, Liu Yuejin’s argument does not undermine

Kōzen’s theory either. Kōzen’s theory concerning the compilation date of the Yutai

151 Liang shu, “Wu Di xia” 武帝下, juan 3, 69. This is not recorded in Nan shi.

152 Liang shu, “Liu Xiaochuo” 劉孝綽, juan 33, 480-481. Dao Qia was appointed Palace

Aide to the Censor-in-Chief 御史中臣 in 525. See Liang shu, “Dao Qia” 到洽, juan 27,

404.

70 xinyong is not only convincing, but also validates Kōzen’s choice of source: Zhao Jun

Edition. Therefore, I support Kōzen’s conclusion about the compilation dates of juan seven and eight and that all the poets included in two juan were alive during their compilation.

Selection Criteria of Yutai xinyong

As we discussed in previous chapter, while the editorship of Yutai xinyong is still debatable, we can be certain that Xiao Gang played the important role of commissioning the compilation of Yutai xinyong. One must begin with Xiao Gang’s views on literature, because to a great extent his poetry and possibly other literary production guided or influenced by him were guided by them. Xiao Gang’s letter to his brother Xiao Yi offers his most extended comment on the subject matter. In it he voices his disatisfaction with the literary trends headed by his contemporaries:

Recently I have studied the literary styles of the capital. They are all

exceptionally dull and pedantic. Writers compete in frivolity and superficiality,

and contend in producing melodious tunes. I have tried to think about it

throughout the long winter nights; still I cannot figure out the reason for this.

These works have strayed from the principles of “comparison” (bi 比) and

“evocation” (xing 興) and are diametrically opposed to “Airs” (feng 風) and

“Encountering Sorrow” (sao 騷). Under certain circumstances one may use “Six

Codes” and the “Three Canons of Rites,” because in predicting auspicious and

inauspicious events and entertaining noble guests there is a proper function for

them. But I have never heard that anyone who aims to express his feelings in song

should copy the “Rules for Women”; or someone who takes up his pen to

articulate his will should imitate the “Injunction against Drunkenness!” In

describing “the Spring days linger” they imitate “Guizang” 歸藏 [a chapter in Yi

jing, The Book of Changes]; in portraying “the rivers roll on” they adopt

“Dazhuan” 大傳 [another chapter from the same book].

比見京師文體，儒鈍殊常，競學浮疏，爭為闡緩，玄冬修夜，思所不得，

既殊比興，正背風騷。若夫六典三禮，所施則有地，吉凶嘉賓，用之則有

所，未聞吟詠情性，反擬內則之篇，操筆寫志，更摹酒誥之作，遲遲春

日，翻學歸藏，湛湛江水，遂同大傳。153

Xiao Gang’s main complaint was that his contemporaries have confused literature, particularly poetry, with historical documents and philosophical works. To the contrary, he argued, poetry should have a unique function that separates it from other genres: to

“express, through chanting and singing [of poetry], one’s feelings” (yinyong qingxing 吟

詠情性). This authoritative statement is taken from no other source than the Great

Preface to the Shijing 詩經 (The Book of Songs). But in adopting this phrase, Xiao Gang has altered it to suit his own agenda. To understand how far Xiao Gang’s adaptation has departed from its original context in Shijing, we need to examine the relevant part of the

Great Preface, which states:

153 “Yu Xiangdong Wang shu” 與湘東王書, “Quan Liang wen” 全梁文 in Quan

Shanggu Sandai Qin Han Sanguo Liuchao wen 全上古三代秦漢三國六朝文, comp.

Yan Kejun 嚴可均 (1762-1843) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1958), 11.3111a-b.

When the kingly way declined, rites and moral principles were abandoned; the

government lost its power to teach; the political structure of the states changed;

the customs of the family were altered. And at this point the mutated poems were

written. The historians of the states understood clearly the marks of success and

failure; they were pained by the abandonment of proper human relations and

lamented the severity of punishments and governance. They expressed their

feelings in chanting and singing poetry (yinyong qingxing 吟詠情性) to criticize

those above, understanding the changes that had taken place and thinking about

former customs. Thus the mutated poems emerge from the feelings, but they go

no further than rites and moral principles. That they should emerge from feelings

is human nature; that they go no further than rites and principles is the beneficent

influence of former kings.154

至於王道衰，禮義廢，政教失，國異政，家殊俗，而變風變雅作矣。國史

明乎得失之跡，傷人倫之廢，哀刑政之苛，吟詠情性，以風其上，達於事

變，而懷其舊俗者也。故變風發乎情，止乎禮義。發乎情，民之性也；止

乎禮義，先王之澤也。155

154 Translation is based on James Legge, The Book of Poetry, vol. 1 (Egypt: Library of

Alexandria, 1967), 43.

155 Maoshi zhengyi 毛詩正義, annot. Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 and Kong Yingda 孔穎 in

Shisanjing zhushu 十三經註疏, (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1964), 1.3-4.

Here, poetry is situated in the grand context of dynastic history and social customs. It is quite clear in this passage that the maxim “to express one’s feelings through chanting and singing of poetry” (yinyong qingxing), which was later canonized as the most authoritative statement on the characteristic generic function of poetry, is deeply rooted in a social and political context. It is both the origin of poetry and the ultimate standard by which poetry must be judged. In other words, the value of poetry derives from its combining personal experience with concerns about a political and social reality. The poet’s personal feelings must be integrated into the larger social and political background. These two aspects of qingxing 情性 (feelings), the personal and the sociopolitical, constitute a source of tension and delicate balancing in Chinese poetic theory. Xiao Gang’s own agenda was to subvert this balance, to undermine the pragmatic, moralistic attitude toward literature that had dominated the literary theory that was passed down to his time. He argues that qingxing should be voiced out by using one’s own words instead of imitating earlier works. It can be viewed as an appeal for attention to the aesthetic value of poetry writing.

One major reflection of this literary theory is through the seventh and eighth juan, which contain mainly the literary works composed in the Liang court, and closely related to social events such as literary gathering, court banquet and poetry composition at the imperial command. “Poetry composed at imperial command” is divided into two types by the Qing commentator Wu Zhaoyi 吳兆宜; according to him, “only poetry written at the command of the emperor is called yingzhao 應詔, and only that written at the command

74 of the crown prince is called yingling 應令.”156 Nearly 50% of the poems in the seventh and eighth juan of Yutai xinyong were written in response to an imperial command.

Instead of preparing the poetry for a long time, writing under highly socialized occasions might have been a “newness” of context, which required spontaneity of court poets under the duress of an imperial command. While spontaneity encourages “unfiltered” expression, conforming with the ideal of naturalness (ziran 自然), imperial commands asserts the power structure that reinforces hierarchy and order. The tension between the imperial setting of a court environment and the expression of a poet is an intriguing aspect of Chinese court poetry. While the social occasions and themes of court poetry were often determined by the imperial patron, the poetry itself somehow still retained the intuitive expression—that is, the spontaneity—of the court poets.

As described, Yutai xinyong selected poems both from earlier times and from within the courts in the Liang and Chen Dynasties. Selecting poems written by poets who were alive during the compilation time would have been intrinsically distinct from choosing from gushi 古詩 and yuefu 樂府. Why would such different selections have occurred within the scope of this anthology? We need to put the anthology under further scrutiny within its larger cultural context. To do this, I will begin by examining Xiao

Tong and Xiao Gang as the Emperor Wu of Liang’s heirs.

The Tong 统 in Xiao Tong’s name means “uniting.” The name frequently appears in various cognate forms in reign titles in both the north and the south during the sixth century. In pursuing his own style of “uniting,” Xiao Tong invited and received

156 Yutai xinyong jianzhu, 256.

75 talented and learned scholars, and he discussed texts and literary works with them. At this time, the Eastern Palace had some 30,000 juan of books, and famous men of talent gathered together here. The compilation of Wen xuan was one of the best manifestations of the flourishing literature during that time.

As for Xiao Gang, he possessed distinct interests in literary works. At the time when Fabao lianbi was compiled, which was known to be in 534, it appeared that Xiao

Gang was duly following the principle that the Eastern Palace should not only nurtures virtue, but also nurtures culture.157 He preoccupied himself with at least two aspects of cultural promotion: on the one hand, he encouraged a kind of poetry that lay strong emphasis on aesthetic value and style; on the other hand, he promoted Buddhist literature.

Although no extant edition survives, the title of Fabao lianbi implies that this work was certainly of literary concern.

In existing scholarship, Xiao Gang’s name is commonly associated with Palace

Style Poetry. We have discussed Xiao Gang’s own practice of Palace Style Poetry at the beginning of this chapter, but should we view Xiao Gang strictly as a representative writer of Palace Style Poetry? I think this view is somewhat reductive. He was also the most prolific Buddhist writers of his time, though the great majority of his works on

157 Xiao Gang had a more detailed discussion on the principles of leading the Eastern

Palace in “Da Xu Chi shu” 答徐摛書, he refuted Shan Tao’s saying “東宮養德而已”

(The Eastern Palace should only focus on nurturing its virtue,) and further argued that the culture was what lacked in the capital. See Liang Jianwen di ji 梁簡文帝集 in Hanwei liuchao bai sanjia ji 汉魏六朝百三家集, (Taipei: Xinxing shuju, 1963), 3.2624.

Buddhism are lost. As J. Marney remarks, if more of his Buddhist works had survived,

“[Xiao Gang] might be remembered above all as a great Buddhic writer.”158 The very small part of his existing Buddhist production has been, according to Marney, overlooked as “superficial literary dazzle,” but it testifies to his continuous efforts to harmonize

Buddhist canon and a Chinese literary and aesthetic style.159 The Fabao lianbi, in 220 juan, was his the most important Buddhist anthology commissioned by him. It was the product of a grand project, even for the Liang court. Buddhist encyclopedias (leishu 類

書) and literary works flourished in Liang Dynasty. Emperor Wu Xiao Yan 萧衍 (464-

549) commissioned the compilation of Fo ji 佛記 (Record of the Buddha) in the early

500s and then Jinglü yixiang 經律異相 (Differentiated Manifestations of Sutras and

Laws) in 516. The latter became the only extant encyclopedia from before the seventh century.160 Fabao lianbi was the third Buddhist encyclopedia compiled in the Liang court.

Although Xiao Gang was enthusiastic in Buddhist production, it does not mean that the works commissioned or composed by Xiao Gang were all explicitly or implicitly of a Buddhist nature. Xiao Gang’s interest in depicting women was evident from the titles of some of his poems, such as “On a Court Lady during Her Nap” 詠內人晝眠,

158 Marney, Liang Jien-wen ti, 123.

159 Ibid., 124.

160 Wiebke Denecke, Wai-Yee Li, and Xiaofei Tian, eds. The Oxford Handbook of

Classical Chinese Literature (1000 BCE-900CE) (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2017), 135.

“Responding to Others On a Concubine Exchanged for a Horse” 和人以妾換馬 or

“Listening to Singing Girls at Night” 聽夜妓.161 Asides from these poems portraying womanly beauty, Xiao Gang had also composing matching poems for different occasions, such as “Returning to the South city from the State of Dun” 從頓還南城, “The seventh evening in the seventh lunar month” 七夕, “Poem on spring night” 春宵 and

“Poem on winter morning” 冬曉. Clearly, Xiao Gang was a diverse poet, as well as a

Crown Prince with multiple cultural and literary interest. He could at the very same time set his courtiers to work on two seemingly different projects: the Yutai xinyong and the

Fabao lianbi. This would be one plausible explanation for the same arrangement of contemporary authors’ names in the two works, as different as they may be.

Making New Poetry

Comparisons are often made between Wen xuan and Yutai xinyong, two surviving literary anthologies that issued from the same Eastern Palace while being occupied by two different crown princes of the Liang. Such comparisons have tended to emphasize the respective moral characters of the two brothers. A popular view is to divide the two anthologies into two opposite “schools.” Based on this view, Wen xuan was meant to establish standards, set norms, and to encourage emulation by aspiring aristocratic

161 Yutai xinyong 玉臺新詠, Comp. Xu Ling 徐陵 (507-583). 四部叢刊 Sibu congkan.

See also Yutai xinyong jianzhu 玉臺新詠箋註, annot. Wu Zhaoyi 吳兆宜 and Cheng Yan

程琰 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1985), 418, 426, 427.

78 youths; Yutai xinyong, by contrast, was for the pleasure of palace ladies.162 For those who regarded pleasure as dispensable in the business of writing, the Palace Style Poetry would always constitute a target for criticism. As David Knechtges aptly points out, “this view of poetry as divertissement reflects the new poetic interests of the era and is far removed from the conservative Confucian literary ideas of Xiao Gang’s contemporaries such as

Pei Ziye 裴子野 (469-530), who frowned on literature for entertainment.”163

Tian is the first to give a clear definition to the term “school” or “camp” in this particular case. The starting point of the distinction of different schools (or camps) may be as Tian maintains, “an anachronistic misunderstanding of the age—perhaps a result of observing the intertwined literary and political partisanship commonly seen in late imperial China.”164 However, this theory was promoted for decades and even became settled conviction in academic circles worldwide for a reason. It is well acknowledged that a large number of men of letters emerged during the period of the Liang and that they lived in a complex literary world. When facing this large and talented group, the theory of the different “schools/camps” is one way of sorting out the complicated connections

162 For a discussion on the difference between the two Liang literary anthologies, see

Hayashida Shinnosuke 林田慎之助, “Monzen to Gyokudai shin’ei hensan no bungaku shisō” 《文選》と《玉臺新詠》編纂の文學思想, Chūgoku Chūsei bungaku hyōronshi (Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1979), 399-420.

163 David Knechtges, “Culling the Weeds and Selecting Prime Blossoms,” in Culture and

Power in the Reconstitution of the Chinese Realm, 200-600, pp. 200-41.

164 Xiaofei Tian, Beacon Fire and Shooting Star, 6.

79 between those persons and the theories they favored. Nonetheless, the clear-cut model has its limits when it comes to dealing with a far more complex reality. In fact, as many scholars have pointed out, many literati did not confine themselves to one literary group.

The change of group membership sometimes was simply caused by official transfers.165

To further examine the cultural environment within which the Yutai xinyong emerged, we need to consider Xiao Gang’s own works. In the “Letter Admonishing

Daxin, the Duke of Dangyang” (“Jie Dangyang Gong Daxin shu” 戒當陽公大心書), he urges his son to broaden his learning, advising him that writing is different from one’s conduct and behavior:

You are still young at your age. What you lack is learning. Only learning can last

long and expand. Therefore, Confucius said: “I used to fast all day and stay up all

night to think. It was not beneficial. It would be better to learn.” I would not

prefer that you stand still facing the wall; [or be] like a monkey wearing a cap.

The way of conducting oneself differs from writing. Conduct gives priority to

circumspection. Writing should be unrestrained.166

汝年時尚幼。所闕者學。可久可大。其唯學歟。所以孔丘言。吾嘗終日不

食。終夜不寢。以思。無益。不如學也。若使牆面而立。沐猴而冠。吾所

不取。立身之道。與文章異。立身先須謹重。文章且須放蕩。

Xiao Gang’s theory that “writing should be unrestrained” was violently attacked by

Confucian scholars in later dynasties. The word Xiao Gang used for “unrestrained,”

165 Ibid., 143.

166 Yiwen leiju, “Jianjie” 鑒誡, 23.424.

“fangdang” 放蕩, caused controversy in academic circles as well. Traditional criticism interprets “fangdang” as “debauchery,” which is the same meaning as it has in modern

Chinese. Yang Ming remarks that “fangdang” means “freedom from restriction” in the sense of “indulgence.” According to Yang’s interpretation, Xiao Gang believes that a gentleman should carry out rites and practice morality; yet, it is allowable for the gentleman to “indulge” himself in writing at the same time.167 Dang Shu Leung disagrees with Guo Shaoyu’s remarks criticizing Xiao Gang for separating writing from conduct as a false theory that resulted in “erotic literature”— Palace Style poetry.168 He discusses the meaning of “fangdang” in the contemporary linguistic context of Xiao Gang’s time.169

Similar to Yang Ming, Dang remarks that “fangdang” contains the meaning of “free from restriction.” However, Yang Ming’s argument is rather conventional because his conclusion ignores the different ways this word was used. “Fangdang” is primarily used for human behavior that can be interpreted as “debauched” or “indulgent.” This is the reason why the word in Xiao Gang’s letter has been taken in the same sense for a long time.

167 Wang Yunxi 王運熙 and Yang Ming 楊明, Wei Jin Nan-bei Chao wenxue piping shi

魏晉南北朝文學批評史 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1989), 299-300.

168 Guo Shaoyu 郭紹虞, Zhongguo gudian wenxue lilun pipingshi 中國古典文學理論批

評史 (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1959), 81.

169 Dang Shu Leung 鄧仕樑, “Shi ‘fangdang’,” 釋 “放蕩” in Chūgoku bungaku hō 中国

文学報 35 (1983): 37-53.

There is also a trivia but important point. Xiao Daxin was born in 520 and was granted the title of Duke of Dangyang in the fourth year of the Zhong-Datong Era (532), at the age of thirteen sui.170 Although we do not have the precise date when this letter was written, from the phrase in Xiao Gang’s letter, “You are still young at your age (you 幼),” it is safe to infer that Xiao Daxin was still an early teenaged boy at that time.171 Since

Xiao Gang wrote this letter to his son for the purpose of education, not for expressing his own literary thought particularly, Dang Shu Leung’s understanding better suits this context. Dang remarks that Xiao Gang’s letter belongs to the category of family instruction. Like other fathers, Xiao Gang wishes his son to have a peaceful and successful life. Dang argues: “Although Emperor Jianwen was leading the contemporary literary trend with keen determination at blazing new trails, he did not want his son to behave indulgently.”172 That is the reason why Xiao Gang separated writing from personal conduct.

As the patron of Yutai xinyong, Xiao Gang also displayed strong interests towards folk songs. We see in their poetry an influence from the popular song traditions known as the “Music of Wu” (Wu sheng 吳聲) and “Western Songs” (Xi qu 西曲). The “Music of

170 Liang shu, “Taizong shiyi wang” 太宗十一王, 44.613 and 615.

171 Gui Qing 歸青 places this letter under the entry of the fourth year of the Zhong-

Datong Era (532) in Xiao Gang’s chronological biography. See Gui Qing, Nanchao

Gongti shi yanjiu 南北朝宮體詩研究 (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 2006), 362-363.

172 簡文帝領導當時的文學潮流，銳意變新，可是他雅不欲兒子的行為任誕放達.

See Dang Shu Leung 鄧仕樑, “Shi ‘fangdang’,” 48.

Wu” originated near the capital of Jiankang 建康, and the “Western Songs” came from the central Yangtze and Han river areas, especially Jiangliang and Xiangyang. These songs have a distinctive form, which is the quatrain, and are dominated by the themes of love and courtship. They are also full of local dialect expressions.173 Both Xiao Yan and

Xiao Gang had first-hand knowledge of local folk songs. While serving as governor of

Jingzhou, Xiao Yan lived in Xiangyang, where he became acquainted with the Western

Songs, and he began to write his own versions of them.174 Xiao Gang also spent time in

Xiangyang, and his poetic collection contains large numbers of poems written in imitation of the “Music of Wu” and “Western Songs.” The ninth and tenth juan are good examples of this appreciation of folk songs. Xiao was also appointed Regional Inspector of Yongzhou 雍州 when he was twenty-one years old in the fourth year of the Putong Era

(523) and this time, he stayed at this position until the first year of the Zhong-Datong Era

(529).76 Hence, Xiao Gang was stationed in the middle section of the Yangtze River basin for nearly a decade. His “Song of Yongzhou” (“Yongzhou qu” 雍州曲) is none other than a tune from his realm.175

Yutai xinyong also reflects contemporary taste. The words xin yong 新詠 (new songs) in the title, as well as phrases in the preface such as xin qu 新曲 (new tunes), xin

173 See David R. Knechtges, and Taiping Chang, Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese

Literature (vol. 2): A Reference Guide (Brill, 2013), 1380.

174 See Guo Maoqian 郭茂倩, Yuefu shiji 樂府詩集 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979),

48.709.

175 Yutai xinyong jianzhu, 7.283-85.

83 sheng 新聲 (new music), and xin shi 新詩 (new verse), show a self-conscious awareness of the “new” poetic tastes of the princely court. Among the new tastes reflected in the anthology are the “Songs of Wu” and the “Western Songs,” examples included extensively in the final juan of Yutai xinyong.176 He also selected numerous imitations of these songs written by literati poets. The Wen xuan includes no such pieces. In fact, the

Wen xuan excludes nearly all folk material. Even the section in which folk songs could have been inserted— hat is, the poetry category known as yuefu 樂府 (“Music Bureau” poem)—contains only three anonymous Han Dynasty ballads. The first, “Watering

Horses at a Long Wall Grotto” (in Yuefu shiji juan 27), is also included in Yutai xinyong, where it is attributed to Cai Yong 蔡邕.177 The second, “Song of Heartache” (juan 27), also is in Yutai xinyong, which is attributed to Cao Rui 曹叡 (204-39), Emperor Ming of the Wei 魏明帝.178 The third anonymous piece is “Long Song,” which is found in no other pre-Tang text. The fact that Yutai xinyong ascribes the first two poems to known authorship also is evidence for the compilers’ revision of the work.

This preference for contemporary poetry is quite unlike the Wen xuan, which selects few contemporary works. As Cao Daoheng 曹道衡 and Shen Yucheng 沈玉成 have shown, Wen xuan selections “basically come from the hand of writers who died

176 There are five “Jindai Xiqu ge” (Modern Western Songs) and nine “Jindai Wuge”

(Modern Wu Songs), see Yutai xinyong jianzhu 10.476-83.

177 Ibid., 1.33-34.

178 Ibid., 2.68.

84 before 513, which is the year of Shen Yue’s 沈約 (441-513) death.”179 The emphasis of the shi 詩 selections is on the poetry of the Wei, Western Jin, and Song periods. The only two Qi-Liang-era poets who have significant numbers of poems in the Wen xuan are Xie

Tiao 謝眺 (464-499) and Shen Yue, and almost all their poems are in the travel, presentation and response, and miscellaneous poems groups. Although Xie Tiao was an acknowledged master of the yongwu shi 詠物詩, none of his yongwu pieces is included in the Wen xuan, which shows that yongwu shi does not fit into the taste of Wen xuan. Only one yongwu shi by Shen Yue, “Song on the Wild Geese on the Lake,” is included.180 It is interesting to notice how the personal tastes of the commissioners may have acted as a decisive factor in an anthology, even for a grand court project like Wen xuan.

Conclusion

As it includes many poems written before the Liang era, which cannot be regarded as Palace Style Poetry in the strict sense of the term, Yutai xinyong is not an anthology of a single poetic style. On the basis of previous discussion, questions of whether there is an overarching organization, or unified selection criteria for the compilation of Yutai xinyong can be resolved to some extent. The first six juan are collection of works from dynasties before the Liang, which reflect a retrospective way of viewing poetry that served the purpose of preserving the legacy of previous dynasties.

179 Cao Daoheng 曹道衡 and Shen Yucheng 沈玉成, Nanbeichao wenxue shi 南北朝文

學史 (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe), 1991, 35.

180 Wen xuan 30.1424.

The seventh and eighth juan, in contrast, consist of works of Liang Dynasty writers who were still alive at the time of the compilation of these two juan of Yutai xinyong and were actively engaged in court literary activities. They are the contemporary part of the whole collection, and the most complicated part. I will discuss these two juan in detail in

Chapter Three. The focal point of the last two juan is poetry that exhibited the “newness” based in the folk songs of the Liang time. In sum, I propose that “internal coherence” exists among the first six juan, between the seventh and eighth juan, and between the last two juan of the anthology, but not in Yutai xinyong as a whole.

Chapter Three

Literary Gatherings and Anthologization

Chapter three discusses the seventh and eighth juan in a detailed fashion. I use the approach of close reading to extract the “internal coherence” that I see within these two juan. Matching poems (heshi 和詩) and poems written at the imperial command (yingzhi shi 應制詩) make up a large portion of these two juan, which indicates the social nature of the collection found therein. Rather than treating the anthologization of these two juan as an effort to collect Palace Style Poetry, I emphasize that it was a production of the literary salons surrounding Xiao Gang and Xiao Yi.

As discussed in former chapters, due to the the scarcity of the extant zongji 總集

(general anthologies) during the Southern Dynasties, studies on the practice of anthologization are limited to a few works. However, along with the zongji, compiling bieji 別集 (collections of individual authors) was also a prevalent practice during the Qi-

Liang era. Wei Zheng, the compiler of Sui shu gives us an account on bieji before listing them:

The term bieji was first mentioned in the Eastern Han. Ever since Spirit of

Equilibrium [Qu Yuan] literary men have been numerous, but due to diverging

intentions, their writing styles have differed. Gentlemen of later ages, in order to

perceive their style and tendency, have examined their heart and mind; in

consequence they have separately gathered [individuals’] writings and called

them ji or “collections.” Men of letters admired and recorded these collections to

form the category of “literary writings.” However, along the course of time much

was scattered and lost. The loftiest utterances and most outstanding of their time

have more or less survived. Now they are listed here in chronological order.

別集之名，蓋漢東京之所創也。自靈均已降，屬文之士之眾矣，然其志尚不

同，風流殊別。後之君子，欲觀其體勢，而見其心靈，故別聚為，名之為

集。辭人景慕，並自記載，以成書部。年代遷徒，亦頗遺散。其高唱絕俗

者，略皆具存，今依其先後，次之矜此。181

In the list that follows, not only do we see substantial collections of writers well known today, but also many more by those who have been otherwise forgotten. Shen Yue, not

181 Sui shu, 35.1076-79.

88 surprisingly, claimed the largest collection, in 101 juan. Wang Yun 王筠 (481-549) ranked second with a collection in 42 juan, which are divided into four sub-collections, each of which is named after one of the four official posts he held consecutively. Yan

Yanzhi’s 顏延之 (384-456) collection consists of 25 juan, Xie Lingyun’s 謝靈運 (385-

433) 19 juan, Liu Xiaochuo’s 14 juan, Tao Qian’s 陶潛 (132-194) 9 juan, and He Xun’s

何遜 (469-519) 7 juan. Members of the Liang ruling house, namely Xiao Yan and his three most literary sons—Xiao Tong, Xiao Gang, and Xiao Yi—also boast quite impressive collections. The titles alone of Xiao Yan’s writings amounted to two juan.

Such literary production by an imperial family was unprecedented.182 This table indicates that members of imperial families were actively involving in literary production, and anthologizing their works.

182 The table is only based on works recorded in Sui shu, we should also bear in mind that

Jian’an writers’s works suffered great losses, so the main purpose of this table is to show the prolific era of literary production during Southern Dynasties.

In addition to the unstable political situation and the family background of the ruling class, scholars often list the influential factors affecting the literature of the

Southern Dynasties, especially that of the Qi and Liang periods, as follows: the decline of

Confucianism and the thriving of Buddhism and Daoism, the decadent social climate, the increasing urbanization, the separation of literature from orthodox Confucianism, the influence of folk literature, and the advocacy and patronage of the monarchs.183 Among

183 Lin Dazhi 林大志, Si Xiao yanjiu: Yi wenxue wei zhongxin 四蕭研究 —— 以文學為

中心 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2007), 23-69. See also Hu Dehuai 胡德懷, Qi Liang wentan yu si Xiao yanjiu 齊梁文壇與四蕭研究 (Nanjing: Nanjing Daxue chubanshe,

1997); Lin Dengshun 林登順, “Wei Jin Nan-bei Chao wenlun shang chengxian de ruxue

90 these factors, Hu Dehuai remarks that the advocacy and patronage of the monarchs of the

Qi and Liang are most remarkable because the monarchs actively participated in literary activities themselves.184 The “Four Xiaos” 四蕭 of the Liang, namely, Emperor Wu and his three sons, Xiao Tong, Xiao Gang and Xiao Yi, often become the topic of discussion regarding the literary landscape of the Liang. It is during Qi-Liang dynasties that there was a major revival of literary culture in courts. As a result, there was important development in poetry and poetics that would eventually led to major shifts through many centuries. All of the Qi-Liang literary courts were sponsored by one family—the

Xiao family that ruled over two dynasties and produced many literary patrons and poetic talents. The seventh and eighth juan of Yutai xinyong is a case in point that highlights the prosperity of literary salons at the Liang courts.

Literati Groups and Literary Salons

The first prominent literati group in the Qi-Liang era was hosted by Xiao Ziliang

蕭子良 (460-494). Like the Jian’an masters whose appellation was named after a reign year, this group of poets is known by the name Yongming (483-493), the reign name of

jingshen” 魏晉南北朝文論上呈現的儒學精神, Wei Jin Nan-bei Chao wenxue lun ji:

Wei Jin Nan-bei Chao wenxue guoji yantao hui lunwen ji 魏晉南北朝文學論集：魏晉

南北朝文學國際研討會論文集, ed. Nanjing Daxue Zhongguo yuyan wenxue xi,

(Nanjing: Nanjing Daxue chubanshe, 1997), 449-460.

184 Hu Dehuai, Qi Liang wentan yu si Xiao yanjiu, 6.

Emperor Wu of Qi, Xiao Ze 蕭賾 (440-493), Xiao Ziliang’s father.185 Nan Qi shu gives this account of Xiao Ziliang’s literary salon:

Ziliang, Prince of Jingling, opened up his Western Residence and summoned

literati. [Wang] Sengru, together with Imperial Academy students Yu Xi, Qiu

Guobin, Xiao Wenyan, Qiu Lingkai, Jiang Hong, Liu Xiaosun, all joined the

salon due to their claim of being good at words...

Ziliang, Prince of Jingling, used to gather scholars at night to write poems [within

limited time kept] by carving notches on candles. For a poem with four rhyming

couplets, they would carve a notch of one inch, which served as a guideline of the

time limit. Wenyan said: “To compose a poem within the time of burning one

inch of the candle, what is so difficult about that?” Then, together with Lingkai

and Jiang Hong, they struck a bronze bowl to establish the rhyme. As soon as the

sound faded, a poem was finished. And it was quite readable. Liu Xiaosun, a

person from Pengcheng, was learned and quick-witted, but often felt unfulfilled.

He would often sigh: “Of people in the past, some became ministers just because

185 On the Yongming poets, see Meow Hui Goh, Sound and Sight: Poetry and Courtier

Culture in the Yongming Era (483-493) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010). On the “Eight Companions of Jingling,” see Nie Dashou 聶大受, “‘Jingling bayou’ wenxue jituan de xingcheng ji qi tedian” “竟陵八友” 文學集團的形成及其特點 in Shandong daxue xuebao 山東大學學報 (1998: 2): 24-29, 37; Liu Yuejin, Yongming wenxue yanjiu

永明文學研究 (Taibei: Wenjin chubanshe, 1992).

they started a new discourse, some received white jade disc as they stood talking.

[Ancient] books indeed are misleading.186

竟陵王子良開西邸，招文學，僧孺與太學生虞羲、邱國賓、蕭文坎、邱令

楷、江洪、劉孝孫，並以善辭游為…

竟陵王子良嘗夜集學士，刻燭為詩，四韻者則刻一寸，以此為率。文琰

曰，頓燒一寸燭石成四韻詩，何難之有？乃與令楷、江洪等共打銅缽立

韻，響滅則詩成，皆可觀覽，劉孝孫，彭城人，博學通敏而仕多不遂。常

歎曰古人或開一說而致卿相，立談間而降白壁，書籍妄耳。

Liu Xiaosun’s complaint reveals his understanding, shared by his contemporaries, that poetic talent guarantees fame and gain. But there are exceptions to what poetic talent could bring. Sometimes, what keeps a good poet from being successful in climbing the socio-political ladder is his incompatibility with his patron. He Xun and Wu Jun are two examples of this.187 The fact that Liu Xiaosun was not successful may not necessarily be because he was not good enough as a poet, but that he was faced with too fierce a competition. Many poets were present at Xiao Ziliang’s court and it simply was not possible for everyone to be recognized. We have already acquainted ourselves with some of the best poets in Qi, but Liang shu and Nan Qi shu offer a more extended list at Xiao

Ziliang’s court, including the “Eight Companions”:

The Prince of Jingling opened up his Western Residence and summoned wenxue

or literati. Xiao Yan, Shen Yue (441-513), Xie Tiao (464-499), Wang Rong (468-

186 Nan shi, 59.1463.

187 Liang shu, 33.871.

493), Xiao Chen (478-529), Fan Yun (451-503), Ren Fang (460-508), and Lu

Chui (470-526) socialized together. They were called the “Eight Companions.”

竟陵王子良开西邸，招文学，高祖与沈约、谢脁、王融、萧琛、范云、任

昉、陆倕等并游焉，号曰八友。188

The dozen or so men mentioned above all were important as poets as well as political figures. Among them, some were imperial relatives such as Xiao Yan and Xiao Zhen, others were high-ranking officials such as Shen Yue, Wang Rong, Fan Yun and Ren

Fang, and some were young aristocrats such as Xie Tiao and Lu Chui. In addition to literary endeavors, Xiao Ziliang’s salon members had political agendas to carry out. What happened toward the end of the Yongming era verifies this aspect about the group. Poets at Xiao Ziliang’s court voluntarily or involuntarily got involved in coups supporting or subverting Xiao Ziliang’s ascension to the throne.189

After Xiao Ziliang’s death, Emperor Wu, as a former member of “Eight

Companions of Jingling,” gathered some of the members of the prince’s literati group at his Western Residence, including Shen Yue and Lu Chui. He was a founding emperor of the Liang, who was versed in both military affairs and literary learning. As a learned scholar, the literary and cultural undertakings he promoted were unprecedented and for that matter quite rare in Chinese history. As Yao Silian puts it, to “promote literature and learning” (興文學) was one of Emperor Wu’s governance policies.190 His courteous

188 Liang shu, 1.2.

189 See Meow Hui Goh, Sound and Sight, 13-16.

190 Liang shu, 3.97.

94 reception to men of letters resulted in the rise of elites originating from the low-rank gentry class as well as the flourishing of literary families.191 His literary activities encouraged voluminous compilations of literary encyclopedias, Buddhist canons and works in numerous fields such as history, genealogy and so forth in the Liang Dynasty.192

It was during Emperor Wu’s reign that Zhong Rong 鐘嶸 (ca. 468-518) and Liu Xie 劉勰

(ca. 465-532) produced their two important literary treatises.

In 508, Emperor Wu issued an edict to establish an academy at the Eastern

Palace, and accordingly Academician positions were created.193 An appellation often attached to Xiao Tong’s entourage is the “Ten Scholars at the Eastern Palace” (Donggong shi xueshi 東宮十學士). Although there are several different listings of who the ten scholars were, according to the Nan shi they were: Lu Chui, Zhang Shuai 張率 (475-

527), Xie Ju 謝舉 (479-548), Wang Gui 王規 (492-536), Wang Yun, Liu Xiaochuo, Dao

Qia, and Zhang Mian 張緬 (489-531).194 Fu Gang has done a thorough study on the existence of such a group, and his conclusion is that these ten scholars were present at the

191 For detailed discussion about the literary families in the Liang, see Xiaofei Tian,

Beacon Fire and Shooting Star, 117-125.

192 See Xiaofei Tian’s “The Rule of Emperor Wu” and “Mapping the Cultural World (I)” in her Beacon Fire and Shooting Stars, 52-125.

193 David R. Knechtges, and Taiping Chang, Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese

Literature (vol. 2): A Reference Guide (Brill, 2013), 1506.

194 Nan shi, 23.640-41.

Eastern Palace at different times.195 Therefore, there wasn’t an actual literary group. But these ten people were probably the most famous in Xiao Tong’s circle of scholars.196

Although one can be quite certain that the Wen xuan was compiled in the Eastern

Palace, there is a belief that locates its compilation not in the capital, but at Xiangyang.

According to David Knechtges, the Song geographical treatise Recorded Splendors of the

World (Yudi jisheng 輿地紀勝) by Wang Xiangzhi (王象之 ca. 1196) mentions that at an ancient site in Xiangyang one could find a building called the Literary Selections Loft

(Wen xuan lou 文選樓), where the Crown Prince of Zhaoming compiled his anthology.197

This text includes the information that Xiao Tong assembled at this place ten scholars, who included Liu Xiaowei 劉孝威 (ca. 496-549), Yu Jianwu, Xu Fang 徐防, Jiang

Bocao 江伯操, Kong Jingtong 孔敬通, Hui Ziyue 惠子悅, Xu Ling, Wang Yun 王筠

(481-549), Kong Shuo 孔爍, and Bao Zhi 鮑至, for the purpose of compiling the Wen xuan. This group was known as the “Scholars of the Lofty Studio” (Gaozhai xueshi 高齋

195 Fu Gang, Zhaoming Wen xuan yanjiu 《昭明文選》研究 (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2000), 140-42.

196 For Zhang Shuai’s biography, see Liang shu, 33.475-79. For Xie Ju’s biography, see

Liang shu, 37.529-30.

197 See David R. Knechtges, Wen Xuan or Selections of Refined Literature, Volume I:

Rhapsodies on Metropolises and Capitals, 10.

學士).198 In spite of the pervasiveness of this belief, which appeared quite late, it has no historical basis. Several Qing scholars, as well as the modern authority on Wen xuan, Gao

Buying 高步瀛, have shown that the sources that associate Xiao Tong with Xiangyang are mistaken. Except for the first few months after his birth, Xiao Tong was never in

Xiangyang.199 Furthermore, Xiangyang was the capital of Yong 雍州, the province over which Xiao Tong’s younger brother Xiao Gang ruled from 523 to 526,87 and it was to him, not Xiao Tong, that the coterie of scholars known as the “Scholars of the Lofty

Studio” belonged. Evidence for this point is provided by the Nan shi:

[When Yu Jianwu] was in Yong Province, he was commanded together with Liu

Xiaowei, Jiang Boyao 江伯搖, Kong Jingtong 孔敬通, Shen Ziyue 申子悅, Xu

Fang, Xu Chi, Wang You 王囿, Kong Shuo, Bao Zhi, altogether ten persons, to

copy and compile various literary works. They were bountifully treated with

fruits and delicacies and were called the “Scholars of the Lofty Studio.”200

[庾肩吾]初為晉安王國常侍，王每徙鎮，肩吾常隨府。在雍州被命與劉孝

威、江伯搖、孔敬通、申子悅、徐防、徐摛、王囿、孔鑠、鮑至等十人抄

撰眾籍，豐其果饌，號高齋學士。

198 Wang Xiangzhi 王象之, Yudi jisheng 輿地紀勝 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1992),

82.9.

199 See Yang Zongshi 楊宗時, Xiangyang xianzhi 襄陽縣志 (Hubei: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 1989), 2.20-23.

200 Nan shi, 50.1246.

Although the names of the ten scholars in the Nan shi account differ from those in the

Yudi jisheng version, clearly both works refer to the same group. There is no doubt that they properly belong with Xiao Gang, who was as ardent a devotee of literature and scholarship as his elder brother. The following table illustrates representative literary salons in the Qi-Liang era.

Matching Poems Written at Imperial Command

Literary salons were not a phenomenon entirely new to China before the Qi-Liang era. Salon-like relationships existed early in the Han and during the Jian’an period.

Writing at imperial command was the practice at literary gatherings in the court during the Southern Dynasties. Zongqi Cai calls this type of poems “panegyric poetry,” commenting that its flourishing during the Qi-Liang era “is reflected both in the number of poems produced and in the diverse subjects and occasions they address.”201 The manner in which at least some of them seem to have been produced, along with their descriptive mode and their form, shows them to be quite representative of poetic trends at the time. The poems discussed in this chapter are by poets who lived most of their lives under the Liang dynasty. Among their poems in the seventh and eighth juan of Yutai xinyong, the he shi 和詩 or matching poems accounts for a prominent portion. As David

Knechtges writes of this period in Chinese history:

The Liang dynasty was a period of intense literary activity, not only in the realm

of creative writing, but also in the relatively new fields of literary criticism and

scholarship. Beginning with the founder Xiao Yan... the Liang imperial house

maintained an ardent devotion to literature in all of its aspects. Writers and

scholars were invited to the Xiao family courts, both in the capital and in the

201 Fusheng Wu, Written at imperial command: Panegyric poetry in early medieval

China (NY: SUNY Press, 2009) 146.

provinces. At many of these establishments writers formed literary clubs or

salons, which were usually headed by a member of the Xiao clan.202

At various banquets and other social occasions, poems were written at imperial commands. Despite the fact that many panegyric poems are occasion-oriented, often times, they might also overlapping with another sub-genre of poetry, yongwu shi. Kang-I

Sun Chang sees a link in Qi and Liang times among the salon environment, yongwu shi, and the octave form: “The most important aspect of yung-wu poetry,” she writes,

“concerns the symbolic correspondence between its form and content. The very compactness of the eight-line structure seems to mirror an equally compressed world of the self-contained.”203 While yongwu poems were popular for a long time and have been produced in the salon setting, a few matching poems written at the imperial command of this period go beyond the delicate descriptions of interior objects that characterized yongwu poetry. This is particularly true of those by Xiao Gang and Xiao Yi. The following table lists all the matching poems in the seventh and eighth juan.

202 David R. Knechtges, Wen Xuan or Selections of Refined Literature, Volume I:

Rhapsodies on Metropolises and Capitals, 4.

203 Kang-i Sun Chang, Six Dynasties Poetry (New Jersey: Princeton University Press,

1986), 87.

100

101

102

Based on Zhao Jun’s edition, there are 71 poems in the seventh juan and 56 poems in the eighth; not surprisingly, 62 poems are matching poems, which accounts for almost 50% of the poems within these two juan. Many of these matching poems were composed at imperial command. The large percentage of matching poems written at imperial command is the first and foremost evidence for these two juan’s origin as the production of literary salons and gatherings in the court. Furthermore, these two juan share the same arrangement method. Among 71 poems of the seventh juan, 42 of them were written by the Crown Prince at that time, Xiao Gang, which unequivocably points to the irreplaceable position of Xiao Gang in this juan. Starting from the eighth juan, courtiers surrounding these two Xiaos are the main poets featured. Among their works, eighteenare matching poems written to accompany Prince of Xiangdong Xiao Yi’s poems, which, along with the large number of Xiao Gang’s poems, clearly points to the close connection of these two juan to both Xiao Gang and Xiao Yi.

Despite the new directions they were taking in verse, Liang poets admired their

Jian’an predecessors, especially Cao Zhi. In his Shi pin 詩品 (Gradings of the Poets), an

103 early work of literary criticism, the Liang critic Zhong Rong 鐘嶸 (d. 518) placed Cao

Zhi in the highest of his rankings. Toward the end of his life, Zhong Rong was associated with the youthful Xiao Gang and may have had some influence on him. In any case, it is clear from his “Yu Xiangdong wang shu” 與湘東王書 (“Letter to the King of

Xiangdong”) that Xiao Gang thought highly of the works of Cao Zhi and the Jian’an period, so it is not surprising that he wrote a poem about the famous city of the period.

和湘東王橫吹曲 Matching Prince of Xiangdong’s Hengchui Tune204

洛陽道 The Luoyang Street

洛陽佳麗所 Luoyang, the place for beauty,

大道滿春光 Its streets full of spring glory.

游童初挾彈 Sportive boys hold their first catapults,

蠶妾始提筐 Young ladies who feed silkworms start to carry their first

baskets of fruits.

金鞍照龍馬 Golden saddles blaze on dragon horses,

羅袂拂春桑 Silken sleeves caress spring mulberry.

玉車爭晚入 Jade carriages race late into town,

潘果溢高箱 Pan Yue’s fruit fills tall hampers.

All the streets and roads are glorious in the spring daylight, and the life of commoners are vividly depicted in this poem. Allusion about Pan Yue 潘岳 (247-300) has been repeatedly used in this poem. Youtong 游童 (“sportive boys”) and canqie 蠶妾

204 Yutai xinyong jianzhu, 281.

104

(“silkworm-feeding women”), carrying their first catapults and first baskets, both filled with fruits, are depicted to be showing their admiration toward Pan Yue.205 All the images mentioned in the later lines are symbols of aristocratic family: jin’an 金鞍, longma 龍馬, luomei 羅袂 and yuche 玉車. The last line directly echoes with the allusion to Pan Yue and hints at the nostalgic feeling in the final note. As Lin Wenyue points out, in the poems that Pan Yue wrote when he was serving in the north, the land he longed to return was the capital Luoyang.206 The positive and joyful tone set upon Luoyang, a wonderful place for beauties, at the beginning of the poem is somehow a contrast with the reality that Pan Yue cannot be returned to his the place of his longing.

As a piece of matching poem, Xiao Gang’s poem is meant to harmonize with the poem of Xiao Yi. Xiao Yi’s poem is a yuefu poetry about cockfighting. Both Xiao

Gang’s and Xiao Yi’s poems offer glimpses of the formerly magnificent northern city of

Luoyang, albeit only through literary imagination, rather than through their own eyes.

This is Xiao Yi’s poem:

205 This alludes to the Pan Yue 潘岳, the Western Jin poet, who was a good-looking man.

When he went out, women always carried baskets and children always carried catapults to toss fruits into his carriage, so he would come home with a carriage full of fruits. Jin shu, 55.103. David R. Knechtges, “Pan Yue” in Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese

Literature: A Reference Guide, Part One (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 698-709.

206 Lin Wenyue 林文月, “Lu Ji Pan Yue shi zhong de ‘nanfang’ yishi” 陸機潘岳詩中的

“南方”意識 in Tai Da zhongwen xuebao 臺大中文學報 5 (1988): 81-118.

105

洛陽道 The Luoyang Street207

洛陽開大道 In Luoyang they built a grand street,

城北達城西 From north of the city wall, it reaches west of the

city wall.

青槐隨幔拂 Green pagoda trees flicker beside the tents,

綠柳逐風低 Verdant willows lower chasing the wind.

玉珂鳴戰馬 Jade bridle ornaments ring on the war horses,

金爪鬪場雞 Metal talons clash on the pit cocks.

桑萎日行暮 As mulberry trees wither and the sun moves to

dusk,

多逢秦氏妻 One meets many wives from Qin’s family.

Not surprisingly, the several yuefu poems to this title by poets associated with the Liang ruling family show signs of mutual influence. The last two lines of the present poem are an allusion to the story of the beautiful and chaste Qin Luofu 秦羅敷, immortalized in the earlier yuefu ballad “Moshang sang” 陌上桑 (Mulberry Trees on the Path). The reference to the fighting cocks in connection with Luoyang is no doubt a legacy of Cao Zhi’s

“Ming du pian” 名都篇 (Ballad of Famous Cities).208

207 Yutai xinyong jianzhu, 321.

208 “鬥雞東郊道，走馬長楸間” (The fight-cocks are on the eastern suburb road,the horses are passing through tall catalpas.) See Zhao Youwen 趙幼文 annot., Cao Zhi ji jiaozhu 曹植集校注 (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1984), 484.

106

Xiao Gang and Xiao Yi’s yuefu poems contain no clear indication of their origin, according to Guo Maoqian. In the Yuefu shiji, there was no earlier poem or lyric with the title “Luoyang dao” that are placed before Xiao Gang’s in the Yuefu shiji. Masuda infers that this yuefu title along with “The Chang’an Street” (“Chang’an dao” 長安道) were created in Emperor Wu of Liang’s reign, because the earliest poets who wrote poems on these yuefu titles in the Southern Dynasties all lived during his time, and these two titles do not appear in the group of contemporary northern folk songs contained in the Gujin yuelu 古今樂錄. Masuda maintains that the capitals of the Han Dynasty in “The

Chang’an Street” and “The Luoyang Street” reveal Liang poets’ longing for the old capitals in the Central Plain before the Period of Division.209 Furthermore, Wang Wen-

Chin remarks that poets in the Southern Dynasties likened their capital Jiankang to

Chang’an and Luoyang.210 In the latter scenario, Xiao Gang was probably writing about

Liang’s Jiankang under the names of Chang’an and Luoyang. Although they had been

209 Masuda Kiyohide 増田清秀, Gakufu no rekishiteki kenkyū 楽府の歴史的研究 in

Oriental Studies Library, no. 9 (Tokyo: Sōbun sha, 1975), 259-60.

210 Wang Wen-Chin 王文進, “Biansai shi xingcheng yu Nanchao de yuanyin,” in Wei Jin

Nan-bei Chao wenxue yu sixiang xueshu yantaohui lunwen ji 魏晉南北朝文學與思想學

術研討會論文集, ed. Guoli Chenggong Daxue Zhongwen xi (Taibei: Wen shi zhe chubanshe, 1991), 50. See also his “Nanchao shiren de sshikong siwei” 南朝士人的時空

思維, in Nanchao shanshui yu Changcheng xiangxiang 南朝山水與長城想像 (Taibei:

Liren shuju, 2008), 157-196.

107 forced out of the Central Plain to the south of the Yangtze River, the ruling elites of the

Southern Dynasties never gave up their dream of returning to their old motherland in the north.211 They brought the old social and political systems to the south, and used old place names from the north to name their new homes in the south.212 The prevalent citations and literary allusions to the snorthern land in the works of Southern Dynasties poets attest to their longing for the “golden age” there, as evident from Xiao Gang and his contemporaries’ yuefu poems. Masuda maintains that “many of the poets in the Liang and

Chen who wrote to new tunes were different from those who wrote to the old tunes. They composed lyrics following the actual meanings of the titles.”213 By “old tunes,” Masuda is referring to the tunes created during the periods of the Han and [Cao] Wei, and he calls those created afterward “new tunes.”214 Xiao Gang and his courtiers wrote poems to the titles of both “old tunes” and “new tunes”, and as we have seen in the examples above, the themes in their yuefu poems correspond to their titles.215 This may have something to do with group competitions, which were prevalent in their literary salons. I will continue this argument later in the close reading.

211 Wang Wen-Chin, “Biansai shi xingcheng yu Nanchao de yuanyin,” 56.

212 Wang Wen-Chin, “Nanchao shiren de shikong siwei,” 167.

213 “梁・陳の新曲の作家の多くは、古曲の作者と異なって、ともかく語義的な題

意に添って曲辭を制作している” in Masuda, Gakufu no rekishiteki kenkyū, 246.

214 Ibid., 8-10.

215 For more examples, see Yutai xinyong jianzhu, 274-302.

108

The poem below by Xiao Gang is a poem written to match a poem by Liu

Xiaochuo, and it is a yongwu shi. Unfortunately, Liu’s poem is no longer extant.

同劉諮議詠春雪 Matching Administrative Advisor Liu’s Poem: On

Spring Snow216

晚霰飛銀礫 Evening hail flies like silver pebbles,

浮雲暗未開 Floating clouds dim the sky and not scatter.

入池消不積 Now snow falls into the pond, melts and does not

stay;

因風墮復來 Caught by the wind, it falls and comes again.

思婦流黃素 A pensive longing wife weaves pale yellow silk;

温姬玉鏡臺 Like Wen Qiao’s bridal gift is her jade mirror

stand.217

看花言可插 She sees flowers, wants to decorate her hair with

them,

定自非春梅 But those are not the plum blossoms of spring.

216 Yutai xinyong jianzhu, 295.

217 When Wen Qiao 溫嶠 (288-329), a military and political leader in the Jin Dynasty, got remarried, he gave his wife a jade mirror stand, which was presumably a rare object.

See Yu Jiaxi 余嘉錫, Shi shuo xinyu jianshu 世說新語箋疏 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju,

2008), 268.

109

This is a yongwu shi with the typical octave format. The title explicitly states the occasion and setting of this poem: Xiao Gang, together with Liu Xiaochuo, are writing on “spring snow.” It is a spring night, with the snow falling lightly. There is a literary gathering held in a venue with a pond. Xiao Gang’s poem started with an image, “Evening hail flies like silver pebbles”; the word fei 飛 captures the motion of the light snow. The second couplet presents the twists and turns in nature: the pond is under the spot light of the center stage due to the contrast between the snow inside and outside it; the wind brings the snow into the picture. It is a highly crafted couplet, as it has perfect parallelism in lines three and four and the vividness of its imagery is quite unusual. The next two couplets focus on a female persona: a sifu 思婦 (longing wife), who is in front of a mirror. She is weaving the silk, and her own reflection reminds her of Wen Qiao, who once sent a rare mirror to his newly married wife as a gift.218 Now she wants to pick the snowflakes, and decorates her hair with them, but they are evanescent, and disappears in the ponds. Xiao Gang had written poems that focus on a woman’s physical appearance, her belongings, or her musical performance. It was this kind of focus on “the feminine” that made his poetry a target of Confucian critics. In this poem, the depiction of woman figure is euphemistic and not sensuous. The snow will eventually disappear in the pond, and what about the beautiful appearance in the mirror? Time does not await youth.

A soberer poem on snow is included in the seventh juan of Yutai xinyong, by another important Liang literary figure, Pei Ziye 裴子野 (469-530). This poem presents a

218 Ibid., 286.

110 different blending of poetic subgenres, that is, between the yongwu shi and the subgenre of frontier poem (biansai shi 邊塞詩). The poem reads:

詠雪詩 Poem On Snow219

飄颻千里雪 Soaring and whirling—a thousand li of snow,

倐忽度龍沙 Flitting by in an instant, it crosses the Dragon

Sands.220

從雲合且散 Following clouds, at times together, at times

dispersed,

因風卷復斜 Relying on the wind, it billows up and again flies

aslant.

拂草如連蝶 Brushing the grasses, just like a string of butterflies,

落樹似飛花 Falling from trees, resembling flowers in flight.

若贈離居者 If you want to send this to one who lives apart,

219 For the text of this poem, see Yutai xinyong jianzhu, 380; Xu Jian 徐堅 (659-729),

Chuxue ji 初學記 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), 2.30; and Xian Qin Han Wei Jin

Nanbeichao shi, 1790.

220 “Dragon Sands” 龍沙, also known as “White Dragon Dunes” 白龍堆, is a desert located south of the Heavenly Mountains (Tianshan 天山) in modern Xinjiang Uyghur

Autonomous Region 新疆維吾爾族自治區. During Pei Ziye’s time, the desert would have been located in the Xirong 西戎 regions.

111

折以代瑤華 Break this off in place of the jasper flower.221

Compared to Xiao Gang’s poem, Pei Ziye’s composition is more conventional. In the first couplet, Pei describes how a thousand li 里 of snow crosses the Dragon Sands, which was located in the Xirong region of the Northern Wei dynasty. Snow, which was rare in the south, is a symbol of the north and of the frontier spaces contested by the

Chinese states and their non-Chinese competitors. Snow in the south, however, becomes an aesthetic experience. In the poem, the snow dances in the wind and transforms into butterflies and flowers when set against the grasses and trees. Pei Ziye’s closing couplet speaks to the otherworldly nature of snow: in place of the jasper flower that the Chu shaman would have offered to the faraway god, he offers the snow that is itself a heterotopic symbol of the north. Even if many poems can be categorized as Palace Style

Poetry, we should investigate works in Yutai xinyong with unbiased eyes. As this poem shows, it is the occasion of the poems and, by extension, the larger literary environment such as social network that fundamentally shaped a collection of poetry—not textual categories such as poetic style, genre, or authorship.

Xiao Gang argues against Pei Ziye’s conservative literary values in a famous letter to his brother, Xiao Yi, specifically naming Xie Tiao and Shen Yue as “the crown

221 These two lines rewrite the following lines from “Greater Master of Fate” 大司命 in the Chu ci: “I break off from the divine hemp xi its jasper flowers, / In order to send it xi to one who lives apart” 折疏麻兮瑤華，將以遺兮離居. See Hong Xingzu 洪興祖

(1090-1155), ed. and annot., Chu ci buzhu 楚辭補註 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983),

2.70.

112 of literature and the models for transmitting one’s intent’ and ‘creating’” 文章之冠冕，

述作之楷模.222 This was a radical statement, as it displaced the standard of the classical tradition that it evoked through the specific allusion to the Analects: Confucius once said that he “transmits but does not create,” (shu er bu zuo 述而不作).223 “Shu zuo” 述作

“Transmitting” and “creating”—for the new poetics of the Southern Qi, as exemplified by Xie Tiao and Shen Yue. Xiao Gang’s championing of the current style over the style of the canonical past caused later critics to portray him as a decadent figure interested only in aesthetic pleasure and responsible for the downfall of the Liang. It perhaps did not help that many of his poems use dense craftsmanship that deviates from the ideal of spontaneous self-expression. The following quatrain, also on snow, is a case in point:

詠雪詩 Xiao Gang, “Poem on Snow”224

鹽飛亂蝶舞 Salt flies, becoming confused with the butterflies’ dance,

花落飄粉匳 The flowers fall, floating into the powder case.

奩粉飄落花 The case’s powder floats up, becoming falling flowers,

舞蝶亂飛鹽 The dancing butterflies are confused with the flying salt.

This is no mere quatrain; it is also a palindrome poem (huiwen shi 迴文詩), one that even mimics the effect of palindromic reading. The four disparate scenes—snowfall,

222 From “Letter to the Prince of Xiangdong,” in Liang shu, 49: 691. See also Dao Xuan

道軒, Guang Hongming ji 廣弘明集 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1991), 35:10a.

223 Yang Bojun 楊伯峻, Lunyu yi zhu 論語譯註 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980), 7.1.

224 Xian Qin Han Wei Jin Nanbeichao shi, 1976.

113 butterflies in flight, falling flowers, and the lady in the boudoir—are connected by the common element of snow. First, the poet describes the salt-like snow, flying downwards and becoming dancing butterflies. Then, he sees the snow as falling flower petals, mixing into the lady’s powder case. The dressing case spills, causing the powder-like snow to fly up and “become” the fluttering petals. The butterflies’ dancing flight, on the other hand, causes the falling salt to whirl and eddy. This is noteworthy both as an illustration of poetry as literary game and as a reminder that Liang poets, who composed innumerable poems playing on the resemblance between blossoms and snow, chose not to adopt any of the other common snow metaphors already used by earlier poets. Granted that the snow/flower comparison was a favorite of court poets, the usage of images of salt, butterflies, and face powder in this poem is striking. They are uncommonly used as metaphors to snow, but they work well to delineate different dimensions of the snow.

“Salt” describes the whiteness, “butterflies” capture the motion of falling from the sky, and “face powder” reveals how minute the snow flakes are. As the blossoms in question are no doubt plum blossoms, we see that there is also a metaphor to seasonal changes.

We might think of the palindromic tradition in poetry as the point at which the poem becomes most like an entity. After all, palindromes are not spontaneous expressions, but objects of craft, with each word carefully selected and measured out so that the line will read intelligibly backwards and forwards. The delight of the palindrome resides in its visual presentation, the characters of the text serving not only the purpose of linguistic communication, but also pointing to the very materiality of language, the

“thingness” of the poetic word.

114

Xiao Gang, who would become crown prince and emperor of the Liang, rejected the claim that literary significance could only derive from using classical allusions, that is, allusions that originated from the canonical set of texts that constituted classical learning. With the reunification of the Chinese empire under the Sui and its consolidation under the Tang dynasty, Xiao Gang became a convenient target for historians and critics seeking to connect literary style to political fortune. Already in the Liang, we find dissenters such as Pei Ziye, whose own poem on snow uneasily blended the rhetoric of frontier poetry with the descriptive style of court poetry. Pei Ziye would blame a poetics lodged in things and objects for the decline of literature and virtue.225 Though the pleasures of rhetorical ornament may seem harmless, the conservative poetics argued that the intense focus on craft would mean that the poem was nothing more than a thing, an object divorced from the ethical concerns of the human realm. However, the courtly poetics of the Southern Dynasties could not be easily dismissed, lasting well into the

Tang and later period of time, and indeed, serving as the very ground for the flourishing of poetic literature in Chinese history.

Searching for Self in the Gatherings

There were competition and tension within a literary salon sponsored by a court.

Unfortunately, we may never know what a court poet truly thought of the court and the

225 See Pei Ziye, “Diaochong lun” 雕蟲論 (“On Carving Insects”). For English translation of Pei’s “Diaochong lun,” see Ping Wang, “Culture and Literature in an Early

Medieval Chinese Court,” Ph.D Dissertation (University of Washington, 2006), 62-64.

115 emperor. Is the ambiguity between voyeuristic distance and female persona a genuine one, or merely an effect of not having a context? Does a comparison with other court societies offer us any insights? Cynthia Chennault argues that Six Dynsaties poets lived in a time when rulers seeking greater autocratic authority deliberately created “court societies” in order to centralize and make impotent their troublesome aristocracies. She emphasizes the relations between this more “centralized” court and the literati:

In conditions that in many ways parallel the cases in Europe, emperors of the

Southern Dynasties shed the feeble position they held during the Eastern Jin, of

being primus inter pares among members of the top social echelon. As they

exercised a rulership that grew increasingly autocratic during the Liu-Song and

Qi, and were able to concentrate in their own person the disposition of political

and economic resources, men who hoped for prominence needed to connect

themselves with that center. In China, as in Europe, webs of patronage that

involved royal relatives and high officials were a result.226

This is particularly true when it comes to “poetry written at the imperial command.” The

“true” self is concealed underneath the banquet or other court occasions. Imperial families, as the sponsors of literary activities, exerted great influence on court poets. In fact, models are much more reliable guides to the outside surface than to inner worth, to

226 Cynthia L. Chennault, “Palace-Style Ladies and Odes on Objects.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Boston, 1994. Quoted in Paul F.

Rouzer, Articulated ladies: Gender and the male community in early Chinese texts, vol.

53 (MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001), 146.

116 ornament (wen 文) rather than substance (zhi 質)—just as a literary text (wen) provides the possibility of feigning substance. If one models oneself perfectly on the source, then who can tell the difference between the ideal and the response? Paintings can compel the viewer to compare him/herself to ideals of ornament, as well as to change and refashion appearance. Xiao Gang had written this poem about viewing a painting:

詠美人觀畫 On A Beauty Beholds a Painting227

殿上圖神女 On the palace wall a goddess is painted;

宫裏出佳人 From the hall emerges a splendid lady.

可憐俱是畫 It’s lovely that both are painted,

誰能辨偽真 But who can detect the fake and the true?

分明淨眉眼 I can discover clear eyes and brows in both,

一種細腰身 And the same kind of slender waist for each.

所可持為異 Here’s the way of telling them apart—

長有好精神 Which one of them has vital spark?

As a witty exercise in observation, the poem’s meaning has more than one way to decipher—from the emphasis on surface in determining a woman’s worth to the equation between painting and the application of cosmetics, to the joking ambiguity of the last line, all is left to the reader to decide if the painting is more real or the “real” woman is more real. Yet the confusion here suggests not only easy duplication and replacement of a woman’s beauty; the painting is also a mirror in which the woman sees another version of

227 Yutai xinyong jianzhu, 301.

117 herself. This is true even if the portrait is not a portrait of her. Yet the painting is not merely the double/rival of the woman; it provides the model. She freezes in front of it, and morphs into it as the painting’s twin sister.

One response to Xiao Gang’s poem is by his most talented poet-companion Yu

Jianwu. Yu Jianwu’s poem reads:

詠美人自看畫應令 To Imperial Command: A Beauty Sees Herself in the Painting228

欲知畫能巧， If you wish to know the cleverness of painting,

喚取真來映。 Summon the real one and let her reflects it.

並出似分身， Side by side, they seemed as if one body divided,

相看如照鏡。 Their appearances seen each other as reflections in mirrors.

安釵等疏密， They steady and space the hairpins the same density;

著領俱周正。 They wear their collars neat and tidy.

不解平城圍， If the Xiongnu people had not raised the Pingcheng siege,

誰與丹青競。 Then who could have vied with this work of art?

The personhood of the woman is being undermined by the implied “splitting” of her in two. No longer does the poem labor at the effort to determine which is real; for Yu

Jianwu, one is no different from the other—unlike Xiao Gang, he does not bother to judge the differences. The third couplet rhetorically restates this: the parallel structure makes each line a mirror of the other line in the couplet (each more or less says the same thing with different words). The attractiveness of the woman and the painting is similarly

228 Yutai xinyong jianzhu, 337

118 found in orderliness and neatness—every ornament is in place, just like the well-chosen words of a parallel couplet. The “real” woman steps out of the mirror that the painting has become, as model and imitator fuse perfectly; or rather, she becomes a mirror as well.

As mirror reflects mirror, a dazzling multitude of identically perfect women is produced.

The poet himself becomes trapped within a paradox—the more he strains to attain the ideal model provided by his patron, the more he becomes indistinguishable from others.

The last couplet refers to a legendary story, mentioned above, surrounding the first Han emperor, Gaozu 高祖 (BC 256-195). Besieged in the town of Pingcheng by an army of nomadic invaders, the Xiongnu, he could think of no stratagem of escape. His clever advisor, Chen Ping, sent an emissary to the Xiongnu Khan’s wife with a painting of a beautiful woman. “The emperor has many such women in his harem. He has sent for one now, whom he plans to present to the khan, in the hope that he will raise the siege.”229 Out of jealousy, the khan’s wife immediately persuaded her husband to let the emperor escape. In light of this story, Yu Jianwu’s poem is ambiguous, yielding two possible meanings: if the chieftain had taken the city, his wife could not possibly have competed with the real beauties he would find there; if he had taken the city, however, he would soon discover that the women there did not live up to the painting, for the perfect beauty it depicted was impossible to match. In the story, the painting becomes a political stratagem, deliberately eliciting jealousy through its own perfection. But is Yu pointing to

229 Sima Qian 司馬遷 (B.C.145-B.C.86), Shi ji 史記 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959),

110.2894. See also Burton Watson, trans. Records of the grand historian: Han dynasty.

(NY: Columbia University Press, 1993), 2.138.

119 the ultimate success of modeling—the true ladies who could replace the khan’s lady? Or is he still claiming that the painting is an impossible ideal that will only lead to disappointment for the khan who pillages the city looking for the “real” and the

“substantive”?

In Yu Jianwu’s poem, the painting is a mirror. For a woman conscious of the need to maintain her look, the mirror is indispensable; it is the surface that allows her to check and maintain her own surface. In poems about longing women, the tropes of a woman abandoning her mirror, putting it aside, or holding on to it are common. But what is it that a mirror truly reflect? Xiao Gang’s poem about a grieving woman raises this question. It reads:

愁閨照鏡 Facing the Mirror in a Grief-filled Bedroom230

別來顦顇久 I have become languished since you left,

他人怪容色 Others find my appearance strange and unusual.

只有匣中鏡 Only the mirror in the case

還持自相識 Recognizes me at once when I hold it up.

She has not only become sorrowful with the departure of her lover—she has become unrecognizable. Being alone, she must depend on the mirror to show her “who she is.”

There is an act of trust in her belief that the mirror will tell her “this is you.” No longer used for maintaining good looks, the mirror now aides the lonely woman’s self- identification. The social necessity of presenting surface now gone, a relation free from

230 Yutai xinyong jianzhu, 513.

120 social pressure is formed between the woman and her mirror. Through this poem, Xiao inadvertently suggests a “self” outside social competition.

Ultimately, mirrors are suggestive of the context that produced the social and self- reflective poem: like the patrons who evaluated the poets and could grant them prestige, the mirros are shrew observers of the women, taking pleasure in their appearance while granting them judgement through the reflection. Above all, mirrors are reflections of the poet’s self. In the competitive community of literary salons, everyone is striving to be like everyone else. Mirrors provide the only reliable feedback to oneself. But, at the same time, they are also the competitors or the enemies that prey on one’s resemblance.

Looking into a mirror is like staring into the abyss, when only one’s self reflection, amidst darkness, is staring back. Courtier-poets, by nature, are courtiers who serve the imperical family, their self-consciousness could not be directly voiced out. Only through the metaphors and female persona could they recognize themselves in the mirror. As pointed out earlier, the great families of the Eastern Jin began to decline precipitously during the fifth century. Emperors during the period attempted to undermine the status of great families by encouraging the careers of minor gentry (sometimes termed hou jin 後

進) or even “commoners.”231 However, scholars who have noted these attempts have also stressed the general failure of southern ruling families to carry out any significant centralization.232 Imperial interest in promoting the underprivileged does not guarantee a

231 Morino Shigeo 森野繁夫, “Ryōsho no bungaku shūdan” 梁朝の文學集團 in

Chūgoku bungaku hō 中國文學報 21 (1966): 83-108.

232 Xiaofei Tian, Beacon Fire and Shooting Stars, 50-51.

121 successful creation of an absolutist polity. Furthermore, an alternative intellectual and social exercise was in progress. On the one hand, court poets were holding seemingly playful towards poems composed at socializing occasions; on the other hand, the

“natural” display of their talent was the essential element in the cultivation and maintenance of court culture. Poetry was a form of social exchange, as evident in poems with titles such as “Six Poems Matching Secretary Wu” 和吳主簿六首 (by Wang Yun),

“Spring Evening” 春宵 (by Yu Jianwu and Liu Huan 劉緩), “To Princely Command:

Respectfully Matching the Prince of Xiangdong’s Poem on Winter Morning” 奉和湘東

王應令冬曉 (by Liu Xiaowei), and “To Princely Command: Grasping My Brush, I

Playfully Compose” 走筆戲書應令 (by Xu Ling). Many of these matching or exchange poems are in fact what would be consider yuefu traditionally, but their titles explicitly remove yuefu personae in place of “actual ones” in the realm of the social conversation at hand. In this realm of social conversation, the depiction of women can act as a particularly effective form of exchange: the men,acting as the judges of female beauty, form a bond as well competition among themselves through their appraisal of the women.

As such, poems on the topic of female beauty act not only as a form of symbolic bonding in the homosocial community, but also a focus for competition and ownership. Of course, the mastery of descriptive language is a test of the poet’s skill in self-control. Self- awareness is both harnessed and displaced in the social setting of court poetry.

The Palace Style Poetry composed by Xiao Gang and those in his literary coterie often contains multiple messages, of which only a sensitive reading can help unpack. A poet can simultaneously engage in acts of observation and competition, causing constant

122 shift in voice and gender. The poem below, composed and prefaced by Liu Xiaochuo, supplies an excellent introduction to their world of social gathering.

遙見鄰舟主人投一物，眾姬爭之，有客請余為詠

From a distance, I saw the host in a neighboring boat throw an object into the water and all his singing girls competing for it. A guest asked me to compose a poem on this.233

河流旣浼浼， The river flowing peacefully,

河鳥復關關。 The river birds crying “guanguan”.

落花浮浦出， Falling blossoms float away from the river banks,

飛雉度洲還。 Flying pheasants cross the islet and return back.

此日倡家女， On this day, the singing-house girls

競嬌桃李顔。 Compete with their charming peach and plum faces.

良人惜美珥， Their master, sorry to lose a fine earring

欲以代芳菅。 Wishes to trade it for fragrant rushes.

The first eight lines set the scene for the competition mentioned in the title: a serene natural landscape for the boating party. However, the host and master of the singing girls throws this “natural” scene into commotion by sacrificing an earring. By throwing it overboard, he exchanges the valuable earring for the water rushes. Formerly, the women were competing only in their “natural” beauty, but now they are thrown into an active struggle for predominance. The next few lines present more intense female competition:

233 Yutai xinyong jianzhu, 330.

123

新縑疑故素， The new one with the fine weave suspects the old one with

her plain silk,

盛趙蔑衰班。 Zhao Feiyan flourishes and defiance the downfall of Lady

Ban.

曳綃爭掩縠， Flaunted silk compete with hidden gauze,

搖珮奮鳴環。 Swinging pendants seize the jingling ring.

Women are described in Yutai xinyong frequently as allusions, as here with Zhao Feiyan and Lady Ban, along with what they wear or decorate themselves with, such as, as here, all sorts of silk apparel. But these ornamented ladies struggled for one more ornament— the earring, because it holds the key to favor. Yet in the final couplet the poet draws attention to his own identity and to male competition and jealousy:

客心空振蕩， The heart of the guest is shaken in vain,

高枝不可攀。 For the loftiest branches never can be reached.

This is a polite compliment to the host: it is up to him to pick the best of the singing girls.

Although the poet and the guest in the other boat may observe the whole drama, they could not reach the highest branch, that is, the host’s recognition. However, writing the poem does give the poet something to strive for, as he participates in a competition of his own. The struggle among the singing girls is reenacted at the level of the verse: Liu

Xiaochuo himself is invited to produce a witty, sophisticated poem on the scene before him and will be judged by his peers and by the host for it. He must struggle to find the best, most effective words for his verse, and, in that sense, he must try to “find the earring” before others do. He is in a situation similar to the singing girls. The “host,”

124 zhuren 主人, in the title is likely the “master” of not only the singing girls, but of the poet as well.

Composing poems at a social occasion is a highly competitive activity. The true self cannot be truly revealed, but one can still sense the self-representation that the poets strived to present in these poems written at banquets and parties in a court setting.

Conclusion

Poems in the seventh and eighth juan of Yutai xinyong are collected based on their social environment. These poems were written in many different social occasions and by poets of many different social ranks. An emperor or imperial prince can host these literary gatherings and add his voice to the literary competition that took place within.

His participation is an incentive to the court poets who competed through poetry. As the poems discussed in this chapter show, construction of the female as well as the poets’ self-identification with her allow the poet to shift back and forth from the position of spectator to that of spectacle. Their poetry mingles in a realm in which conventional boundaries are taken down, while still operating ostensibly within a privileged space defined by the rules of literati competition.

Poems written at feasts and other social occasions are manifestations of the court environment. The competitive nature of this environment is concealed and revealed by the ornamental language of poetry at the same time. Court poets competed through but also were protected by their poetic manipulations. The seventh and eighth juan of Yutai xinyong testify to the complexity of the literary gathering at the Liang court.

125

Conclusion

Yutai xinyong is a good example to study anthologization and literati gatherings, two manifestations of the practice of ji 集 (“collection,” “gathering”), which was core to

Six Dynasties literary culture and beyond. The practice of making literary collections involved multiple stages of editorial processes, and literary gathering was one of the most essential activities that shaped an anthology like Yutai xinyong. Attempting to bring the culture of ji to the forefront of our understanding of the Yutai xinyong, I have challenged the view that it is an anthology of Palace Style Poetry and that it is the complete opposite to the canonical Wen xuan and a “decadent” work. Arguing for the social and cultural complexity behind its compilation, I see this anthology as a representation of the multifaceted literary transformation from the “old” to the “new.”

Yutai xinyong has attracted more scholarly attention recently than before, but it is still not as deeply explored as Wen xuan. Anne Birrell first translated the entire Yutai xinyong into English234 and devoted several chapters in Games Poets Play: Readings in

Medieval Chinese Poetry to the study of this anthology.235 There are several chapters in

Xiaofei Tian’s Beacon Fire and Shooting Star that provide detailed studies of Xiao Gang

234 Anne Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace: An Anthology of Early Chinese Love

Poetry: Transl. with Annotations and an Introduction (G. Allen & Unwin, 1982).

235 Anne Birrell, Games Poets Play: Readings in Medieval Chinese Poetry (Cambridge:

McGuinness China Monographs, 2004), 10.

126 and Yutai xinyong from multiple perspectives. Benefiting from and inspired by these scholars’ works, my research covers not only primary materials but also the extensive literature on Yutai xinyong in Chinese, Japanese and English. My thesis shed a new light on the complex nature of Yutai xinyong, contending that it is not a single-authored and single-styled collection of poems. In proposing my thesis on Yutai xinyong, I connected this work with the practice of anthologization in general during the Six Dynasties.

I have provided basic information, i.e. editions and authorship, regarding the

Yutai xinyong in Chapter One. Specifically, I provided a comparison between two extant edition systems of the Yutai xinyong: Zhao Jun Edition and Zheng Xuanfu Edition. As explained, I chose the Zhao Jun Edition as the main source material for this thesis because it includes all the variants and excludes more poems with disputable authors. As for question of editorship of this anthology, I used the Wen xuan, an anthology compiled during the same era as Yutai xinyong, as a comparative lens to establish my proposal that the Yutai xinyong, like Wen xuan, was possibly compiled by more than a single compiler.

This thesis has also dealt with the possible compilation date and the selection criteria of

Yutai xinyong. As discussed in Chapter Two, I contended with Kōzen Hiroshi’s theory of the compilation date of the seventh and eighth juan of the Yutai xinyong between 533 and

535. Through the examination in the first chapter, I already established the possibility that the Yutai xinyong was compiled from Liang Dynasty to Chen Dynasty, quite possibly in two different “stages.” Meanwhile, I also pointed out that the discrepancy of the arrangements of poets’ names among different juan,speaks to the distinctive focus of different juan of Yutai xinyong. As discussed, I propose that the seventh and eighth juan

127 are the core of the anthologyand that the compilation of these two juan is a vivid exemplar of court literary gatherings and salons.

Another important issue that my thesis deals with pertains to Palace Style Poetry, a name given to the poetry composed and promoted by Xiao Gang and his courtiers when he was residing in the Eastern Palace. I contended with Xiaofei Tian’s opinion that firstly, Palace Style Poetry was written within a certain environment, that is, the palace; secondly, it is a reference to a certain style of poetry, therefore, the term “palace style” itself does not restrain the content and the subject matter of the poetry. Based on this understanding, I examined the Palace Style Poetry included in Yutai xinyong in terms of their form and topic. I found instances such as Pei Ziye’s “Poem on Snow” to support that Yutai xinyong is not merely a collection of Palace Style Poetry. To analyze Xiao

Gang’s literary thought, I further shed light on the famous phrase “writing should be unrestrained” in the “Letter Admonishing Daxin, the Duke of Dangyang” that Xiao Gang wrote to his son, and concluded that when “fangdang,” when applied to literature, indicates the free of restriction of the conventional rules of writing. It is in this sense that

Palace Style Poetry was “new.”

The last chapter of my study focuses on the seventh and eighth juan. Collecting literary works under the patronage of imperial court had been a prevalent practice during

Southern Dynasties.,Through quantitative analysis, I showed that half of the poems in these two juan are matching poems written at the imperial command. My close reading of selected poems from the two juan further reveals that the seventh and eighth juan of

Yutai xinyong is the literary product of literati gatherings in imperial court that centered on My interpretation of his poems and the matching poems written by his courtiers

128 suggests that widely composing yuefu poems and banquet poems were associated with the poetry competitions prevalent in the literary salons at that time. However, the real motivation behind these competitions was not limited to entertainment and career advancement. It reflected a strong longing for the old capitals in north in some cases and a restless search for one’s place in the court in other cases. Poems in these two juan, as I have shown, display intricate aesthetic values and poetic skills.

In sum, Yutai xinyong does not reflect a single selection criterium, a single thematic choice, or a single organization method. Taking the lack of “one-ness” or singularity of the anthology into consideration, I treat its ten juan separately, dividing them into three groups—the first six, seven and eight, and nine and ten. Though this vantage point, I show that there are multiple possibilities in reading this anthology.

Expanding on this case study, there is much room for re-thinking and re-envisioning the literature and poetry of the Six Dynasties and even beyond. Specifically, this thesis plays on a “double-gathering”: the gathering of poetry and the gathering of literary men.

Considering that the opposite of ji is san 散, “dispersal” or “separation,” the conclusion of this thesis can potentially speak to a deep-rooted anxiety in early and early medieval

Chinese literary culture: the fear for losses, fragmentation, death, and oblivion. Due the limited scope of this study, I was not able to give equal focus to the first six juan and the last two as I did the seventh and the eighth, which I plan to do in the near future.

129

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