How to Read Chinese Poetry A Guided Anthology

398 a s y n tHe sis

a much broader array of subject + predicate and topic + comment constructions

than what has been presented here. An exhaustive investigation of the two syntac-

tic constructions and their efficacy for embodying poetic vision must be left to a

future book-length study. Nonetheless, I hope that this broad outline has provided

enough to stimulate a meaningful discussion on this important topic.

Zong-qi Cai

notes

1. Zhong Rong, Shipin jizhu (Collected Annotations of the “Grading of Poets”), ed. Cao Xu (Shang-
   hai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1994), 36–39.


2. Liu Xizai, Yi gai (Essentials of the Arts) (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1978), 69–71.


3. Consider, for instance, the distinction between yuefu or yuefu-style poetry (chaps. 4 and 11)
   and ci poetry (chaps. 12–14).


4. Yu-kung Kao was the first scholar to explore the possibility of analyzing Chinese poetry in
   terms of its use of these two syntactic constructions, in Zhongguo meidian yu wenxue yanjiu lunji
   (Studies of Chinese Aesthetics and Literature) (Taipei: Taiwan National University Press, 2004), espe-
   cially 165–208.


5. Ernest Fenollosa, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, ed. Ezra Pound (San
   Francisco: City Lights, 1936).


6. Yuen Ren Chao, A Grammar of Spoken Chinese (Berkeley: University of California Press,
   1968), 69–72.


7. Xici zhuan (Commentary on the Appended Phrases), A4, A5, in Zhouyi yinde (A Concordance to
   “Yi ching ” ), Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, supplement no. 10 (Taipei: Chi-
   nese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1973), 40.


8. Wang Li, Hanyu shilü xue (Chinese Prosody) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin jiaoyu chubanshe,
   1979), 234–352.


9. Although a monosyllabic or disyllabic line appears occasionally in an irregular-line yuefu,
   sao, or fu poem, it is usually just an exclamatory utterance or a conjunction that has no substantive
   meaning in itself (for instance, “Fu on the Imperial Park” [C3.1], lines 74 and 79; “Song of the East
   Gate” [C4.5], line 19).

suggest eD reaDings

e ng l i sH

Birch, Cyril, ed. Studies in Chinese Literary Genres. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.

Chao, Yuen Ren. A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968.

Cheng, François. Chinese Poetic Writing. Translated by Donald A. Riggs and Jerome P. Seaton.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.

Lin, Shuen-fu, and Stephen Owen, eds. The Vitality of the Lyric Voice: Shih Poetry from the Late

Han to the T’ang. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986.

Liu, James J. Y. The Art of Chinese Poetry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Owen, Stephen. Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics: Omen of the World. Madison: University of

Wisconsin Press, 1985.

Yu, Pauline. The Reading of Imagery in the Chinese Poetic Tradition. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton

University Press, 1987.

C H ine s e

Chou Fa-kao 周法高. Zhongguo gudai yufa gouci pian 中國古代語法構詞編 (A Historical Grammar

of Ancient Chinese: Syntax). Academia Sinica, Special Publications, no. 39. Taipei: Institute of

History and Philology, 1962.