Download PDF by Xiaofei Tian: Tao Yuanming and Manuscript Culture: The Record of a Dusty

By Xiaofei Tian

ISBN-10: 0295985534

ISBN-13: 9780295985534

Winner of a 2006 selection journal notable educational identify Award

As medieval chinese language manuscripts have been copied and recopied during the centuries, either blunders and planned editorial adjustments have been brought, thereby affecting readers' impressions of the author's purpose. In Tao Yuanming and Manuscript Culture, Xiaofei Tian indicates how readers not just event authors yet produce them through shaping texts to their interpretation. Tian examines the mechanics and background of textual transmission in China via concentrating on the evolution over the centuries of the reclusive poet Tao Yuanming right into a determine of epic stature.

Considered emblematic of the nationwide personality, Tao Yuanming (also often called Tao Qian, 365?-427 c.e.) is well known for having grew to become his again on lively govt carrier and town lifestyles to reside an easy rural lifetime of voluntary poverty. The artlessness of his poetic kind is held because the optimum literary and ethical excellent, and literary critics have taken nice pains to illustrate ideal consistency among Tao Yuanming's existence and poetry. previous paintings on Tao Yuanming has tended to just accept this picture, reading the poems to substantiate the image.

Tao Yuanming and Manuscript Culture is a examine of ways this cultural icon was once produced and of the elusive strains of one other, historic Tao Yuanming at the back of the icon. by way of evaluating 4 early biographies of the poet, Tian exhibits how those are in huge degree developed out of Tao Yuanming's self-image as projected in his poetry and prose. Drawing on paintings in eu medieval literature, she demonstrates the fluidity of the chinese language medieval textual international and the way its fabrics have been traditionally reconfigured for later purposes.

Tian unearths in Tao's poetic corpus now not one essentialized Tao Yuanming, yet a number of texts continually produced lengthy after the author's actual death. Her provocative examine the effect of manuscript tradition on literary perceptions transcends its quick topic and has certain resonance this day, while the transition from print to digital media is shaking the literary global in a manner now not in contrast to the transition from handwritten to print media in medieval China.

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Additional info for Tao Yuanming and Manuscript Culture: The Record of a Dusty Table

Sample text

Moreover, as he was very happy with his life and had a way to be self-content, his reputation was on the rise. ”14 Presumably, it was the court officials’ visits and observation that the monk found unbearable. The description of Kang Sengyuan’s residence seems rather lavish in the usually succinct narrative, and it is only in such an environment that Kang Sengyuan is said to have been “self-content,” literally, “acquiring himself ” (zide). The fact that reclusion is closely associated with a well-defined physical space is shown in another Tales of the World anecdote.

Chapter two discusses “who Tao Yuanming really is” by comparing and contrasting his four biographies, which are often used as an independent “historical context” to interpret Tao Yuanming’s works and edit them. Scholars and commentators either try to reconcile any discrepancy between the biographies and Tao Yuanming’s writings, or, if there is anything that contradicts the conventional view of the poet, they choose to ignore it. In this chapter, I will show how the construction of Tao Yuanming in the biographies is, in fact, based on Tao Yuanming’s own projection of his image in his poetry and prose, guided by the Six Dynasties discourse of reclusion, and influenced by different ideological inclinations.

The loneliness of the philosopher is implied in this self-contradictory yearning, and the loneliness of the poet is implied in his becoming the very person who “has forgotten the words” but has also lost the philosopher: 少時壯且厲 撫劍獨行游 誰言行游近 張掖至幽州 飢食首陽薇 渴飲易水流 不見相知人 惟見古時邱 路邊兩高墳 伯牙與莊周 此士難再得 吾行欲何求 When I was young, I was stalwart and passionate; grasping my sword, I went on a journey all alone. Who says that the journey was a short one? 6 Instead of seeing anyone who understood me, I only saw ancient grave mounds.

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Tao Yuanming and Manuscript Culture: The Record of a Dusty Table by Xiaofei Tian


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