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Images of Allegory: A Review Article

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2015

Charles Hartman
Charles Hartman*
Affiliation:
Chinese Studies Program State University of New York Albany, New York
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Early China , Volume 14 , 1989 , pp. 183 - 200
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Copyright © Society for the Study of Early China 1989

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References

1. Yu, Pauline, “Metaphor and Chinese Poetry,” CLEAR 3.2 July 1981), 205-224 Google Scholar, and “Allegoiy, Allegoresis, and the Classic of Poetry ,” HJAS 43.2 (Dec. 1983), 377-412 Google Scholar. I would like to express my appreciation to Professor Edward L. Shaughnessy and to two anonymous reviewers for their assistance in revising this article for publication in Early China.

2. Yu's initial efforts to distinguish between Chinese “imagery” and Western “metaphor” are not maintained throughout the book. For instance, in the concluding pages she writes that in China “imagery was not ultimately important for what it presented directly but for what it concealed and evoked in the reader.… Such a method then came be defined as in fact the method of bi xing and the quintessential^ ‘poetic” one, a position remarkably similar to ideas about metaphor in the West” (p. 217, emphasis added). And the book closes with the sentence: “For all of these reasons, then, Chinese poetic imagery should be distinguished from the metaphors and allegories of Western literature, whose fundamental premises are so very different” (p. 218).

3. Peterson, Willard, “Making Connections: ‘Commentary on the Attached Verbalizations’ of the Book of Change, ” HJAS 42.1. (June 1982), 80 Google Scholar. One notes with interest that Yu argues against Peterson's preferred translation of hsiang as “figure” rather than the more accepted “image.”

4. Granet, Marcel, Festivals and Songs of Ancient China, trans. Edwards, E.D. (London: Routledge and Sons, 1932), 50 Google Scholar. Despite the cosmological gulf, a similar type of “pre- established” equivalence between natural imagery and moral value also occurred in the traditional West. See, for instance, Robertson, D.W., A Preface to Chaucer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 388-390 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fletcher, Angus, Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press), 113ff Google Scholar, where reference is made to the well-known book of E.M.W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture. For a specific example, see Kaske, R.E., “The Summoner's Garleek, Onyons, and eek Lekes,” Modern Language Notes 74 (1959), 481-484 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the excellent summary “Correlative Thought in Traditional Western Civilizations” in Henderson, John, The Development and Decline of Chinese Cosmology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 54-58 Google Scholar.

5. Chung-shu, Ch'ien, T'an-i lu (Shanghai: K'ai-ming, 1948), 275 Google Scholar [rev. ed. Peking: Chung-hua, 1984, p. 231], Yu refers (p. 199, n.83) to the same page of Ch'ien's work but does not mention this passage, even though its relevance to her argument seems obvious. It is also striking that she makes no reference to Andrew Plaks's extensive discussion of ontological dualism and allegory. Although his discussions center on Chinese fiction, his conclusions, which largely coincide with Yu's, are certainly also valid for Chinese poetiy. See Plaks, , Archetype and Allegory in the Dream of the Red Chamber (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 7,108-110Google Scholar. There are also other significant bibliographical omissions. Yu's discussions of the critical terms fu , pi , and hsing make no reference to the researches of Chow Tse-tsung , who has traced the relationship of all “six principles of poetry” (liu i ) to early shamanism. See “Ku-wu tui yüeh-wu chi shih-ko fa-chan ti kung-hsien” , Ch'ing-hua hsüch-pao NS. 13 (Dec. 1982), 1-25 Google Scholar, and Ku wu-i yd liu-shili k'ao (Taipei: Lien-ching, 1986)Google Scholar. Also missing is reference to the important paper of Shan, Chou, “Beginning with Images in the Nature Poetry of Wang Wei,” HJAS 42.1. (June 1982), 117-137 Google Scholar, which contains much révélant material.

6. I-to, Wen, Shih-ching t'ung-i , Wen I-to ch'üan-chi (Shanghai: K'ai-ming, 1948), vol. II, 127 Google Scholar.

7. For the consensus among traditional Shih-ching commentators that this poem concerns the Duke of Chou's impending return to the West, see Tzu-chan, Ch'en , Shih-ching chih-chieh , (Shanghai: Fu-tan ta-hsüeh ch'u-pan-she, 1983)Google Scholar, vol. 1,503-505.

8. Hawkes, David, Ch'u Tz'u: The Songs of the South (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 22 Google Scholar.

9. Li sao tsuan i ed. Kuo-en, Yu (Peking: Chung-hua, 1980), 31 Google Scholar. Cf. the similar interpretation and wording for distich 37 on p. 115.

10. Li sao tsuan i, 33. The Li Chi reference can be found in Li chi cheng i ( Shih-san ching chu-shu ed. [rpt. Peking: Chung-hua, 1980]Google Scholar), vol. II, 1463b; see also Legge, James, Li Chi: Book of Rites (rpt. New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1967), vol I, 458 Google Scholar. Wang Yüan has abridged the original text, which reads in Legge's translation: “If any one give the wife an article of food or dress, a piece of cloth or silk, a handkerchief for her girdle, an iris or orchid, she should receive and offer it to her parents-in-law.”

11. Hawkes, Ch'u Tz'u, 28.

12. The text of the Shuo-wen chich-tzu , a work contemporaneous with Wang I, defines the ch'iu as “a young dragon with horns” (lung tzu yu chiao-che ), but there is considerable evidence from later citations of this text that the correct reading should be “a dragon without horns” (lung wu chiao-che ), and this latter reading was accepted by Yü-ts'ai, Tuan , Shuo-wen chieh-tzu chu (rpt. Taipei: Shih-chieh, 1961), 13A.14bGoogle Scholar. This was the tradition for later commentators. See, for instance, Hsiang-ju, Ssu-ma “Shang-lin fu” , in Wen hsüan (rpt. Shanghai: Ku-chi, 1986), vol. I, 371 Google Scholar. where Li Shan's gloss on ch'iu reads “lung yeh, urn chiao yüeh ch'iu yeh” , which succinctly combines the two points of Wang I: ch'iu are dragons; they have not yet grown horns.

13. Pfizmaier, August, “Das Li-sao und die neun Gesänge,” Denkschriften der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Classe (Vienna), 3 (1852), 167, n.5Google Scholar.

14. For instance, Yu's treatment (pp. 182-187) of the material on Chiao-jan and Wang Ch'ang-ling from the Bunkyō hifuron has suffered from her failure to consult the 1983 edition of Wang Li-ch'i , Wen-ching mi-fu lun chiao-chu (Peking: Chun-kuo she-hui k'o-hsüeh ch'u-pan- she) or the important study by Wang Meng-ou , “Wang Ch'ang-ling sheng- p'ing chi ch'i shih-lun” (rpt. in Meng-ou, Wang, Ku-tien wen-hsüeh lun fan-so [Taipei: Cheng-chung, 1984], 259-294 Google Scholar). The latter in particular demonstrates through a comparison of parallel passages that the definitions of the “Six Principles of Poetry” attributed to Chiao-jan and Wang Ch'ang-ling in the Bunkyō hifuron (Wang ed., pp. 158-162) are not textually secure. As a result, evidence drawn from these texts to support Yu's conclusion concerning a “fundamental confusion” between pi and hsing is highly tenuous. Wang Meng-ou has also shown (pp. 273,292n.29) that the texts of two passages Yu has translated from the Shih ko of Wang Ch'ang-ling are probably Five Dynasties reworkings of earlier material, and that the Bunkyō hifuron parallel passages are to be preferred. Strangely, she has not used the textually secure and very interesting material in Wang's “Seventeen Dispositions” (Wang ed., pp. 114ff.), for which there is a preliminary study in English by Lee, Joseph J., Wang Oi'ang-ling (Boston: Twayne, 1982), 67-82 Google Scholar. The seventh of these “dispositions” entitled “enigmatic comparison” (mi-pi ), which is illustrated by one of Wang Ch'ang-ling's own poems and his own commentary, shows him in the process of doing something very close to making his own metaphors, using as always the stock images, but investing them with new, personal values (Wang ed., p. 124-125; Lee, pp. 81-82).

15. For example, Yu's translation and interpretation of Ssu-ma Kuang's comment on Tu Fu's “Spring Gaze” (pp. 197-198) exactly reverses the intent of the passage, which is not talking about imagery but about meaning. The passage opens with a quotation from the Shih-ching poem “T'iao chih hua” (Mao #233) combined with a fragment of the Mao-Cheng commentary to that poem, which Yu has omitted from her translation:

.

The ewes have big heads; the Three Stars are seen in the fish trap. [Mao commentary:] ‘It cannot last for long.’ When the ancients composed poetry they put value on meaning that was beyond the words, so that people could obtain that meaning only after considerable thought. Therefore, those who spoke were without fault; and those who heard were sufficiently admonished. In recent times, only Tu Fu has perfected this style of the Shih-ching poets.…

Ssu-ma Kuang is not simply making a perfunctory bow toward the classics; he is making a direct connection between the didactic function of the Shih-ching poets and Tu Fu. “It cannot last for long” is Mao's reading of the opening couplet to mean that the Chou state will soon fall (see Karglren, Bernhard, “Glosses on the Siao Ya Odes,” BMFEA 16 [1944], 165-166 Google Scholar). Ssu-ma Kuang is reading Tu Fu the same way he read the Shih-ching. It may well be that, as Yu argues, use of imagery such as one encounters in “Spring Gaze” is not present in Chinese poetry until the T'ang; but that is clearly not Ssu-ma Kuang's view.

16. See Bryant, Daniel's enhy on Li Tung-yang in The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. Nienhauser, William J. Jr., et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 554-555 Google Scholar.

17. Wen hsüan (rpt. Shanghai: Ku-chi, 1986), vol. III, 1352. Cf. trans, in von Zach, Erwin, Die chinesische Anthologie (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1958)Google Scholar, vol. 1,520, and Waley, Arthur, Chinese Poems (London: Allen and Unwin, 1946), 44 Google Scholar.

18. See Yu-kung, Kao and Tsu-lin, Mei, “Meaning, Metaphor, and Allusion in T'ang Poetry,” HJAS 38.2 (Dec. 1978), 290-291 Google Scholar.

19. Yu's identification of the Erh-nan mi-chih with exclusively emblematic poetry that inserts into the narrative “images that are not plausible elements of an empirically observed scene” (p. 185) is vitiated by the three poems that conclude the text and whose explication demonstrates the author's own view of how the analogies he has listed apply to contemporaiy poetry. The poems, by Huang-fu Jan , Li Chia- yu , and Li Tuan , are all typical late High T'ang style, all very much in the “transcendence” school. Once should also note that the Erh-nan mi-chih is by no means an isolated example of its genre. Wang Meng-ou (“Wang Ch'ang-ling sheng- p'ing,” 322-323) has pointed out that this style of poetry criticism emphasizing specific one-to-one correspondences between image and signification was popular in the Ch'an monasteries of the late T'ang and Five Dynasties periods, exactly concurrent with the full flowering of Yu's “poetics of transcendence.” Clearly, these issues await further research.