Presence and Praise: Writing the Imperial Body in Han China By Sharon Sanderovitch A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Chinese Language in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Mark Csikszentmihalyi, Chair Professor Michael Nylan Professor Paula M. Varsano Professor Robert H. Sharf Summer 2017 Abstract Presence and Praise: Writing the Imperial Body in Han China by Sharon Sanderovitch Doctor of Philosophy in Chinese Language University of California, Berkeley Professor Mark Csikszentmihalyi, Chair The ruler’s body in early Chinese literature—whether silent and tranquil or bearing the scars of restless public toil; whether emanating light from the depths of the palatial chambers or displaying charisma while traversing the empire—has served as an idiom for the articulation of competing ideals of rulership, governance, and bureaucratization. This work takes the idiom of the ruler’s body and the language of imperial representation as the primary object of scrutiny. It analyzes prevalent rhetorical and literary patterns in light of observations gained in the cross-cultural study of the royal body, metaphor in political discourse, and theories of representation. In particular, I am interested in the way top-down representation, of the ruler by his officials, was conceptualized and advocated in bodily terms, giving rise to some of the most common figures in early Chinese literature. This attention to the work of language in the political discourse of the early imperial period reveals some of the unique features of Chinese theories of monarchy, and brings to light paradigms that structure the literary representation of rulers and rulership across seemingly incompatible genres. The main texts that drive the inquiry in the three core chapters date from two middle points in the long span of the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE): the reign of Emperor Cheng 成帝 (r. 33 – 7 BCE) in the late Western Han, and the reign of Emperor Zhang 章帝 (r. 75 – 88) in the early Eastern Han. The first chapter takes Liu Xiang’s 劉向 (79 – 8 BCE) Shui yuan 說苑 as the gate to an ongoing intertextual discourse of rulership and bureaucratization, looking in particular at metaphors that take the ruler’s body as the source domain. I show, in the second chapter, that some of the conceptual paradigms that structure such figurative constructions in the discourse of authority and delegation underlie literary strategies that support the goals of the ruler’s encomiasts. At the center of analysis in this chapter is Cui Yin’s 崔駰 (d. 92) “Four Panegyrics for the Imperial Tours” 四巡頌—a text that fell under the radar of most early-China scholars, East and West, due to a long interruption in its transmission. In the third chapter, focusing on the summaries and evaluations Ban Gu 班固 (32 – 92) had appended to the imperial chronicles of the Hanshu 漢書 (History of the Han), I argue that awareness to the poetics of praise is instrumental to the study not only of the rhetorical construction of the ruler’s body but also the language of imperial historiography. This work thus examines the relation between metaphor and politics, body and representation, and history and praise so as to highlight features of the early Chinese discourse of rulership that will have hermeneutical and analytical value for scholars of Chinese literature, political thought, and theories of monarchy across cultures. 1 In loving memory of Maya Tal Ronen (1978 – 2013) i Table of Contents Acknowledgements iv Introduction: Body, Metaphor, and Representation 1 (1) The study of the royal body 1 (2) Body-based political metaphors 4 (3) Political representation(s) 8 Chapter 1: Metaphors of the Body Natural—Reading Liu Xiang’s “Way of the Ruler” 13 1.1 Organs of the Body Politic 17 1.1.1 From ‘eyes and ears’ to ‘head and limbs’: retrieving the organologic paradigm 18 1.1.2 A minimal sketch of an intertextual discourse 29 1.1.3 ‘Eyes and ears’ as a challenge to ‘head and limbs’ 36 1.2 Models of the Imperial Body 46 1.2.1 The ruler’s body and the rhetoric of ease 48 1.2.2 The road not taken 56 1.3 Conclusion: Master Kuang’s Advice 65 Chapter 2: The Poetics of Praise—Cui Yin’s “Four Panegyrics for the Imperial 68 Tours” 2.1 Introduction: Text and Context 68 2.2 Putting Praise in Order 70 2.3 Registers of Praise 76 2.3.1 Echoing Emperor Zhang’s edicts 77 2.3.2 Adding the vertical axis 84 2.4 Imperial Emotions and Invisible Bodies 88 Appendix A: The Wenguan cilin (J. Bunkan shirin) and Cui Yin’s “Si xun song” 93 Appendix B: Tables 95 Appendix C: Maps 99 ii Chapter 3: Praise and Paratext—Ban Gu’s History of the Han 102 3.1 Assessing Appraisals: A Review 104 3.2 Between the Poet and the Archivist: A Comparative Analysis of Ban Gu’s Paratext 110 Emperor Wen (r. 180 – 157 BCE) 113 Emperor Jing (r. 157 – 141 BCE) 120 Emperor Wu (r. 141 – 87 BCE) 125 3.3 Concluding Remarks 135 Bibliography 138 iii Acknowledgements This project has benefited from the financial support of a Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, a Joseph R. Levenson Chinese Studies Award, and a Dr. C.F. Koo and Cecilia Koo Fellowship for Outstanding Graduate Student in East Asian Studies. I am grateful to the persons and entities involved for their generosity and trust in my work. For all other forms of support, encouragement, and assistance along the years I am thankful to a long list of individuals—family, friends, teachers, colleagues, and staff—without whom this project would not have materialized. This includes those who, years back, pointed me to the academic path; those who sent me off with a blessing despite great sacrifices; those who provided direction on important crossroads; and those who let me roam, trusting that I will eventually find, or otherwise pave, my own way. The brevity of these notes does not reflect the depth of my gratitude. I am especially indebted to (in the rough order of our first acquaintance) Yoav Ariel, Henry Rosemont Jr. (1934 – 2017), Michael Nylan, Paula Varsano, and, last but far from least, Mark Csikszentmihalyi for their indispensable part in my professional and personal life; to Robert Sharf and Robert Ashmore for assisting and continuing to inspire my efforts to broaden the horizons of my inquiry across disciplines; to Harrison Huang, Jeannette Ng, Hua Kaiqi, and Trenton Wilson for their friendship, advice, and insight at different points of my graduate career; and to Christian de Pee, Mark Lewis, and Charles Sanft for valuable comments and recommendations in the early stages of this project. Wherever I fall short of implementing their advice, as with any error or deficiency, the responsibility is fully my own. Finally, I want to thank Guy, Tomer, and Bar for standing by me through this long period, supporting and complicating my efforts in the sweetest, most rewarding way possible. iv Introduction Body, Metaphor, and Representation This work lies at the intersection of the study of the royal body, body-based metaphors, and political representation, yet these broad labels do not completely capture the field and main thrust of the inquiry that follows. Indeed, ‘body,’ ‘metaphor,’ and ‘representation’ are all notoriously polysemic concepts,1 and modifying them by means of the ‘royal’ and the ‘political’ hardly helps in delimiting clearly the particular field of reference in any given analysis. The nature of their meeting in the present study, therefore, calls for some clarification. I take up each of these three topics below, by no means presuming to present the entire spectrum of applications or avenues of sinological research with regard to any of the three, but aiming to position my line of inquiry vis-à-vis some of the ongoing discussions, and, in the process, lay out the primary theoretical frameworks that have informed my work. The study of the royal body Nearly every study from the late twentieth century onwards that pertains to notions of the ruler’s body makes some note of indebtedness to Ernst Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies (1957). Its wide influence notwithstanding, The King’s Two Bodies does not concern the royal body as an object of scrutiny—not as it came to the fore in subsequent studies of the management of kings’ corporeal yet sacralized bodies in life and death (e.g., clothing, food, and funerals); royal cult and state rituals; and artistic representations, visual or literary, of kings’ bodily aspects.2 Itself a study of medieval political theology prompted by the curious Two-Bodies formulations of the Tudor jurists, the publication of Kantorowicz’s work coincided with the rise of the body as a topic of historiographical inquiry in the later half of the twentieth century, to inspire questioning concerning the physical body of monarchs as a medium and a product of various acts of signification.3 Kantorowicz opens his inquiry with the Tudor theory of the King’s Two Bodies—a theory previously defined by the English legal historian Fredric William Maitland (1850 – 1906) as “a marvelous display of metaphysical—or we might say metaphysiological—nonsense.”4 As articulated in one exemplary case argued by the crown lawyers in the second half of the sixteenth century: [B]y the Common Law no Act which the King does as King, shall be defeated by his Nonage. For the King has in him two Bodies, viz., a Body natural, and a Body politic. His Body natural 1 On “the body” as “no topic or, perhaps, all topics” see Caroline Bynum, “Why All the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective,” Critical Inquiry 22.1 (1995): 1 – 33 (esp.