This episode examines Li Bai’s self-fashioning as a free spirit or rather the creator of the universe in a poetic form seemingly ill suited for making glamorous claims. The poem discussed is not among the best known of his works but well attests to his reputation as the poet-immortal. Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign English poem recital by Andrew Merritt @ Andrew Merritt (divacatrecords.com)...
Aug 08, 2022•9 min•Season 1Ep. 28
This episode provides a close reading of Du Fu’s “Jiang and Han Rivers” and shows how the poet makes a masterful use of topic+comment construction to project his Confucian vision of the universe and the self and earns himself the title of poet-sage. Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign English poem recital by Andrew Merritt @ Andrew Merritt (divacatrecords.com)...
Aug 01, 2022•10 min•Season 1Ep. 27
This episode explains the lexical, syntactic, and structural rules of regulated verse and shows how high Tang masters turn these formal rules into a nonpareil vehicle of projecting their visions of the universe and the self, as evidenced in Du Fu’s famous poem “Spring Scene.” Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Jul 25, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 26
This episode concludes our exploration of Six Dynasties landscape poetry by considering the verse of Xie Tiao (464–499). By Xie Tiao's time, landscape was becoming an increasingly common topic within the world of courtly verse. Partly for this reason, Xie's poetry begins to efface the previously definitive distinction between the human world and the natural landscape, and moreover imbues that landscape with the passions of the courtier—in Xie's case, both his yearning for the court and capital a...
Jul 18, 2022•19 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Xie Lingyun (385–433) is generally recognized as the progenitor and paradigm of poetry on "mountains and waters" (shanshui 山水). Where Tao Qian had written predominantly of the only-partly wild landscapes near his cottage, Xie made his theme the dramatic wildernesses of the southlands. Much of his poetry concerns the scenery of his massive estate, which he staffed with a small army of servants and retainers. His most powerful verse, however, was written in the rugged, unforgiving landscapes he pa...
Jul 11, 2022•20 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Tao Qian (365–427) is premodern China's most famous recluse. After relinquishing his official career at around age 40, Tao returned to his rustic hometown to hide away from what he often suggested was a corrupt court and society. In the hermitage he made for himself at the foot of Mt. Lu, Tao wrote poetry that, on the one hand, extolls his enjoyment of life on the rural margin between the human world and the wilderness and, on the other, narrates the difficulties he had making a living there. Fo...
Jul 04, 2022•21 min•Season 1Ep. 23
This episode discusses the prehistory of Chinese landscape poetry. In the centuries before poets began to write consistently of their concrete, personal experiences out in nature, landscape appeared in poetry primarily as a foil for the city and the court, where most poets were writing. In this role, the natural landscape could be terrifyingly inhospitable or wondrous and pure. Either way, it was for the most part imagined rather than experienced, a site more often for mental roaming than for ex...
Jun 27, 2022•19 min•Season 1Ep. 22
The first of the “Nineteen Old Poems”, the best known poem of an abandoned woman in the collection, features a mosaic combination of time, space, and emotion fragments and thereby captures the otherwise inexpressible melancholy of an abandoned woman. Such a mosaic combination is to become a preferred structure for the most intense of lyrical expressions in later poetry. Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Jun 20, 2022•11 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Two distinct formal features, binary structure and multilateral texture, are developed in the “Nineteen Old Poems,” the definitive collection of Han pentasyllabic poetry. The rise of these two formal features attests to the profound impact of transitions from oral performance to poetic writing, from the dramatic/narrative to the lyrical mode of self-presentation. Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Jun 13, 2022•15 min•Season 1Ep. 20
After nearly one millennium since its birth, Chinese poetry achieved an optimal convergence of sound and sense in its pentasyllabic poems developed during the Eastern Han (25-220 CE). Taking full advantage of an explosive rise of two-character compounds, the anonymous Han pentasyllabic poets created a poetic rhythm far more flexible and expressive than all existing rhythms and adapted it for philosophical reflection and emotional brooding on human transience. Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan Universit...
Jun 06, 2022•19 min•Season 1Ep. 19
This episode discusses the two opposing interpretations of the poem entitled, “Mulberry Along the Lane,” one of the best-known yuefu songs in classical Chinese literature. Traditionally this poem has been interpreted as a representation of social injustice, depicting the situation of an official harassing a peasant girl. The other perspective is the poem is simply a verbal flirtation between a man and a woman and a popular song about a clever lady who employs an engaging and inoffensive way to t...
May 30, 2022•20 min•Season 1Ep. 18
This episode analyzes this yuefu piece from different perspectives. As many of the popular songs of the Han, this poem contains dialogue and monologue at the same time. The poem follows a daring woman’s emotional changes from her initial rage against her lover from the south who jilted her to an unsettling feeling of anxiety. Guest host: Jui-lung Su, National University of Singapore
May 23, 2022•13 min•Season 1Ep. 17
This episode first discusses the functions of the Han Music Bureau and the yuefu poetry as a poetic genre. It points out the fact that we still don’t know if the Bureau really collected these songs from various regions and matched them with music. Many of the popular poems we now call “Han yuefu ” are actually preserved in the History of the Liu Song Dynasty written in the sixth century. The second part focuses on analyzing the yuefu poem entitled, “We Fought South of the Walls” from different a...
May 16, 2022•19 min•Season 1Ep. 16
This episode offers a detailed discussion of the structure and diction of the Lisao and describes the text not as a single poem but as a composite text created from different poetic registers, and different voices, that are otherwise known from the poems of Jiu ge, Jiu zhang, and Tian wen . Guest host: Martin Kern, Princeton University
May 09, 2022•21 min•Season 1Ep. 15
This episode discusses how Qu Yuan’s poetry and biography flow seamlessly into each other, and how the figures of poetic hero and heroic poet repeatedly switched places. Likewise, later transmitters, commentators, and poets could appropriate Qu Yuan’s voice with ease. Guest host: Martin Kern, Princeton University
May 02, 2022•19 min•Season 1Ep. 14
This episode discusses what the Qu Yuan persona meant to Han dynasty intellectuals. Why was Qu Yuan important to Han thinkers in literary, political, and historical, terms? What did they find in the Qu Yuan persona? How did they identify with that persona of their imagination? Guest host: Martin Kern, Princeton University
Apr 25, 2022•20 min•Season 1Ep. 13
This episode continues our previous discussion of the Li sao or On Encountering Trouble. It focuses on two failed spiritual/supernatural trips or flights in search of Qu Yuan’s ideal and his final decision to commit suicide as the result of his disillusionment with his ruler and society. Guest host: Fusheng Wu, The University of Utah
Apr 18, 2022•21 min•Season 1Ep. 12
This episode discusses Li sao or On Encountring Trouble,” the crowning achievement in the Chu ci repertoire. This poem evolves around the life of Qu Yuan, a poetic persona who is the alleged author of the poem. In the first part of the poem, Qu Yuan talks at length about his glorious family history and his own self-cultivation. Guest host: Fusheng Wu, The University of Utah
Apr 11, 2022•20 min•Season 1Ep. 11
This episode provides a brief general introduction to Chuci; it also discusses a poem in this repertoire, Xian jun(“The Lord of the Xiang River), and its influence on Li sao (“On Encountering Trouble”) that will be discussed in the next two episodes. Guest host: Fusheng Wu, The University of Utah
Apr 04, 2022•19 min•Season 1Ep. 10
This episode looks at the concerted effort by three prominent Han commentators to allegorize a poem made up of disjointed or rather conflicting parts. It also reflects on the ironic fact that Han commentators’ allegorizing process itself constitutes a beautiful exercise of literary imagination, foreshadowing the fruitful exploitation of semantic, syntactic, and structural ambiguities by Du Fu, Li Shangyin, and other Tang poets. Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Il...
Mar 28, 2022•14 min•Season 1Ep. 9
This episode features a poem that enacts, through incremental repetition, the unfolding drama of a young woman being torn by longing, hesitancy, love, and fear while a suitor is crushing all physical barriers to have a tryst with her. To sanitize this poem, Han commentators resorted to an allegorizing strategy called “cutting off a section to create a new meaning,” constructing a political allegory on the thinnest of evidence. Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Ill...
Mar 21, 2022•15 min•Season 1Ep. 8
This episode discusses how the anonymous author of “Prefaces to the Book of Poetry” turned “Osprey,” the first of the 305 Shijing poems, from a lively love song into a moral exempla by means of gender switching. It also explains that such imaginative gender switching was made possible by classical Chinese grammar, especially its ungendered use of pronouns and its frequent omission of sentence subjects. Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign...
Mar 14, 2022•13 min•Season 1Ep. 7
This episode discusses how the language of love and kinship is used in diplomatic negotiations through the recitation of odes. For example, a Lu minister uses a wedding song to compare smaller states to a bride welcomed by her groom (the powerful Jin). A woman picking artemisia with care becomes the analogue for a powerful state cherishing a weak one. A Zheng minister uses an ode about seduction to forestall or resist aggression. A Jin leader affirms an alliance through an ode celebrating brothe...
Mar 07, 2022•18 min•Season 1Ep. 6
This episode uses two scenes of reciting odes to explore the struggle for hegemony. The first shows how a fugitive Jin Prince declare his ambition despite his precarious and dependent position. The second features a Jin leader pushing back against the hubristic self-aggrandizement of a Chu prince. Guest host : Wai-yee Li, Harvard University
Feb 28, 2022•14 min•Season 1Ep. 5
This episode discusses how a “barbarian” chief gains diplomatic advantages by reciting an ode now included in Shijing. The recitation both asserts and effaces differences between “Chinese” and “barbarian” states. It seeks to redefine the past and argues for equality and amity between Jin and the Rong. Guest host : Wai-yee Li, Harvard University
Feb 21, 2022•12 min•Season 1Ep. 4
“Woven” like many of the Da ya (Greater Odes) sings of two of the heroes who laid the groundwork for their grandson and son to overcome the Shang and establish the Zhou dynasty. The text lends itself to memorization and may have been part of early court ritual as our own Star-Spangled Banner celebrates an event in the early history of our country. Guest host : William H. Nienhauser, University of Wisconsin at Madison
Feb 14, 2022•19 min•Season 1Ep. 3
The three courtship forms, “I Beg of you, Zhong Zi,” “The Banks of the Ru,” and “The Retiring Girl,” present contrasting depictions of the courtship process in early China. In the first, a village encounter between two lovers or potential lovers is depicted. The man and the woman in “The Banks of the Ru” may be married or simply lovers, but the link to the previous poem is the concern about the girl’s parents. This is the most clearly erotic of the poems presented. “The Retiring Girl” depicts a ...
Feb 07, 2022•26 min•Season 1Ep. 2
A brief introduction to The Book of Poetry ( Shijing ) , the earliest Chinese poetical collection. While providing close reading of two poems, it informs us about the provenance, subgenres, presentational modes, thematic categories, and formal features of this great poetical collection. Guest Host： William H. Nienhauser, the University of Wisconsin at Madison
Jan 25, 2022•23 min•Season 1Ep. 1
