How to Read Chinese Poetry A Guided Anthology

284 t He F i v e Dy na s t i e s anD t He s ong Dy na s t y

up emotions. The poet’s candor is tricky and his naïveté a pretense, because they

are part of his design. What is most noticeable in this design is his overdoing of an

otherwise well-wrought allegory. The poet cannot wait for the implied meaning to

emanate naturally from the metaphor of his story line. Instead, with the sudden

outburst of emotion in the middle of the second stanza, he impatiently calls his

readers’ attention to the message his allegory carries.

Xinda Lian

notes

1. For a detailed discussion of Liu Yong’s use of lingzi, see Kang-i Sun Chang, The Evolution of
   Chinese Tz’u Poetry: From Late T’ang to Northern Sung (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
   1980), 123–133. See also Shuen-fu Lin, “The Formation of a Distinct Generic Identity for Tz’u,” in
   Voices of the Song Lyric in China, ed. Pauline Yu (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994),
   20–21, and Stuart Sargent, “Tz’u,” in The Columbia History of Chinese Literature, ed. Victor H. Mair
   (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 319.


2. Kao Yu-kung, “Xiaoling zai shi chuantong zhong de diwei” (The Place of Xiaoling Lyrics in
   the Poetic Tradition), Cixue 9 (1992): 17.


3. Shuen-fu Lin was the first to employ this Greek prosodic term, which literally means “act of
   turning” and hence a division of a poem, to refer to a structural unit in a song lyric (The Transfor-
   mation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Chiang K’uei and Southern Sung Tz’u Poetry [Princeton, N.J.:
   Princeton University Press, 1978], 106–107).


4. Kao, “Xiaoling,” 17.


5. Kao, “Xiaoling,” 17.


6. Kao, “Xiaoling,” 18–19.


7. Lin, “Formation of a Distinct Generic Identity for Tz’u,” 22–24.


8. Ronald C. Egan, Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi, Harvard-Yenching Studies, vol.
   39 (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, and Harvard-Yenching
   Institute, 1994), 326–327.


9. A detailed discussion of this issue can be found in Egan, Word, Image, and Deed, 315–317,
   322–330.


10. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University
    Press, 1968), 302.


11. Although the last character of line 14, fu, fits into the rhyme, it is not marked as a rhyming
    character because its position is designated as ju (unrhymed) in standard rhyme books.

suggest eD reaDings

e ng l i sH

Chang, Kang-i Sun. The Evolution of Chinese Tz’u Poetry: From Late T’ang to Northern Sung.

Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980.

Cheng, Ch’ien. “Liu Yung and Su Shih in the Evolution of Tz’u Poetry.” Translated by Ying-

hsiung Chou. In Song Without Music: Chinese Tz’u Poetry, edited by Stephen C. Soong, 143–

156. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1980.
     Egan, Ronald C. Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi. Harvard-Yenching Studies, vol. 39.
     Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, and Harvard-Yenching
     Institute, 1994.
     Fong, Grace S. “Persona and Mask in the Song Lyric (Ci).” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 50,
     no. 2 (1990): 459–484.