the banquet’s aftermath 211 THE BANQUET’S AFTERMATH: YAN JIDAO’S CI POETICS AND THE HIGH TRADITION* by ROBERT ASHMORE University of California, Berkeley I. Introduction At what point in the history of medieval Chinese literary culture should one say that the history of the genre of “song lyric,” or ci 詞, begins? Many of the musical tune-forms that make up the genre can be traced back to at least the mid-eighth century;1 by this measure, the eleventh-century lyricists from the heyday of the banquet ci— writers such as Fan Zhongyan 范仲淹 (989–1052), Zhang Xian 張先 (990–1078), Yan Shu 晏殊 (991–1055), Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修 (1007– 1072), and Yan Jidao 晏幾道 (~1030?–~1110?)—were heirs to nearly four centuries of tradition in the craft. Another way, however, to approach the question of the beginnings of ci is to attempt to locate the time at which the genre begins to be discussed within the tradition as an object of serious historical inquiry, and to be accorded a secure place among older literary forms. As is well known, when asked in this way the question yields a much later date, and a more prob- lematic set of issues. It was not until surprisingly late that the “his- * I would like to thank Peter Bol, Tim Chan, Christian DePee, Ron Egan, Paul Kroll, Stephen Owen, Michael Puett, Eric Wanxiang Wang, Stephen West, and an anonymous reviewer for this journal for their comments, criticisms, and en- couragement at various stages in the preparation of this article. 1 The tradition of the court music repertoires of the Sui and Tang referred to as yanyue 燕樂 is the earliest traceable direct source for many of the metrical patterns that came to make up the ci genre. In particular, many ci metrical pat- terns can be traced back to the repertoire lists occurring in the Jiao fang ji 教坊記 of Cui Lingqin 崔令欽, a catalogue of the repertoires of imperial music and dance troupes during the reign of emperor Xuanzong 玄宗 (712–56). For a concise overview of the sources and issues involved, see Wu Xionghe 吳熊和, Tang Song ci tong lun 唐宋詞通論 (Hangzhou: Zhejiang guji chubanshe, 1995), 1–21. © Brill, Leiden, 2002 T2oung Pao LXXXVIII Also available online – www.brill.nl tp-262.pmd 211 4/16/2003, 1:08 PM 212 robert ashmore tory of ci” became a recognized part of literary scholarship within the premodern Chinese tradition.2 In fact, the relation of ci to the “serious” types of writing collectively designated as wenzhang 文章 was never fully secure at any point in the history of premodern China— ci, for example, only sporadically appear in the “collected works” (wenji 文集) of their authors. Indeed, the very strenuousness of the rhetoric of such late-imperial ci apologists as Zhang Huiyan 張惠言 (1761–1802), who attempted to legitimize the genre by systemati- cally reinterpreting the tradition in terms of political allegory, be- speaks an enduring distrust of the form.3 The reasons for the persistent difficulty of representing a “history of ci” are varied, but the relation between the newer song lyric genre and the established lyric tradition of the literati shi 詩 is central to the problem at every level. Ci, to echo the influential formulation of the twelfth-century lyricist and critic Li Qingzhao 李清照 (1084– 1155?), was always “something different” in relation to shi,4 but the precise nature of this difference was difficult to pin down in a way that did not in effect deny all claim for ci as “serious” writing. The outlines of what would become a relatively stable field of debate and theorization about the aesthetic distinctiveness and historical filiation of ci, or “cixue” 詞學 as it came to be called, began to emerge only during the latter part of the eleventh century, largely out of disputes over the merits of the ci of Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037–1101).5 The 2 Two of the main obstacles to serious consideration of ci as part of literary history were (1) the disreputable ethical associations of ci as part of an ethos of banqueting and carousing with singsong girls, and (2) the difficulty of establishing a positive lineage of historical antecedents for ci composition. These issues are discussed, respectively, in two articles in the volume Voices of the Song Lyric in China, edited by Pauline Yu (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994): Ronald C. Egan’s “The Problem of the Repute of Tz’u During the North- ern Sung” (191–225), and Pauline Yu’s “Song Lyrics and the Canon: A Look at Anthologies of Tz’u” (70–103). 3 For further information on Zhang Huiyan and the “Changzhou school” of ci criticism associated with him, see Xie Taofang 謝桃坊, Zhongguo cixue shi 中國詞 學史 (Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 1993), 213–36, and Chia-ying Yeh Chao, “The Ch'ang-chou School of Tz’u Criticism,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 35 (1975), 101–132. 4 Her formulation is that ci “is a distinct family” 別是一家 in relation to shi. See her Ci lun 詞論, in Li Qingzhao ji jiaozhu 李清照集校注 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1986 [1979]), 194–5. For a discussion of Li Qingzhao’s Ci lun and of many of the other issues relating to the early history of the genre touched on in this introduction, see also Shuen-fu Lin’s article, “The Formation of a Distinct Generic Identity for Tz’u,” in Voices of the Song Lyric in China, 3–29. 5 For an overview of the sources and specific issues in early “ci studies,” see tp-262.pmd 212 4/16/2003, 1:08 PM.