In this informed and knowledgeable study of an important but much-neglected genre of traditional Chinese poetry, Fusheng Wu offers insightful reading, critical acumen, and analytical sophistication. With its attention to individual poems and its sustained interest in uncovering the human drama behind the composition of the poems, the study epitomizes traditional Chinese poetic criticism. It will not only “compel us to reexamine the Chinese poetic tradition” (p. 1) from a new perspective furnished by this unusual genre, but also enrich our understanding of a key aspect in the lives of many writers in premodern China: their intimate and sometimes dangerous relationship with the ruler. The book will prove useful not only for specialists in classical Chinese poetry or early medieval China, but also for intellectual and political historians.
After a brief introduction in which the author examines the rationale behind using the Western term “panegyric poetry” to describe yingzhi shi or yingzhao shi (poems “written at imperial command”), the book plumbs the wealth of the Chinese tradition, beginning with the Han rhapsody (chapter 1), considered “a major source of convention for later panegyric poetry” (p. 21), through the genre's many variations during the Wei-Jin Nanbeichao period (chapters 2–8), which forms the bulk of the study, and ending with its ramifications under the Sui reunification (chapter 9). The author's attention to detail and devotion to close reading serve well the main purpose of the book, which is to delineate the “generic features and conventions of panegyric poetry in the Chinese tradition” (p. 10). Through Wu's analysis and narration, the reader is gradually and firmly drawn into the richness and pageantry of panegyric verse in early medieval China.
The book's focus on the patron–poet relationship in discussing individual poems effectively guides the reader through the personalities (the poets and their imperial patrons), occasions of composition (ranging from solemn state ceremonies to informal imperial excursions), and particular historical circumstances and contingencies under which the poems were produced. This neat approach, however, seems to prevent the author from pursuing more deeply the dynamics and interactions between the genre and the larger poetic tradition, which, judging from the evidence presented in the book, were unusually rich in this period.
Another question concerns the broader significance of the book. The author argues that a better knowledge of the genre will challenge the “canonical notion of poetry as a form of sincere and spontaneous self-expression” (p. 212). The idea of poetry as pure personal expression being largely a modern construction notwithstanding, the author in numerous instances makes a particular effort to point out how many writers of such poetry boldly assert their individual personality in obvious defiance of the anticipated conventions of the genre, prompting the reader to wonder whether the practice challenges the so-called self-expressive impulse of traditional Chinese poetry or, rather, illustrates it. Prominent examples include the group of military campaign poems by Wang Can, discussed in chapter 3, or the many cases examined in the later chapters of the book in which more than one person was asked to write on the same topic.
An extended question concerns audience. Was the presumed patron, the imperial ruler, the sole reader? Or should the readership include at least all those who were present at the occasion and were asked to contribute? Is it possible to differentiate a secondary readership from the genre's presumed primary reader, the emperor? Do we know anything about the reception of these poems outside the imperial palace and the immediate moment and circumstances of their creation, for example, when they entered into general circulation by their inclusion in literary anthologies such as the Wenxuan? These questions are important to ask because if the poems were not directed solely to the emperor, as an official memorial was supposed to be, and if their authors had a larger audience in mind while composing them, how would our understanding of the genre be affected? And how would this, in turn, change our conception of the larger poetic tradition, and the relationship between the two?
Despite these questions, Fusheng Wu has achieved the set goals of the book by providing a detailed treatment of the topic, a fine reading of the poems, and a balanced analysis of the historical background and human psychology behind the creation of the poetic texts. The book is an important and welcome addition to our growing knowledge of this pivotal period in Chinese literary and cultural history.
