A New Direction in Medieval Chinese Literary Studies

Memory in Medieval China: Text, Ritual, and Community (part of the book series, “Sinica Leidensia”, edited by Barend J. ter Haar and Maghiel van Crevel) is an edited volume that emerged out of the “11^th Chinese Medieval Studies Workshop” at Rutgers University, organised by Wendy Swartz. This book, dedicated to Alan J. Berkowitz, has nine chapters from nine different scholars based at American institutions in addition to an introduction and index. The introduction, co-written by Robert Ford Campany and Wendy Swartz, lays out the significance of memory studies: “[Memory studies] is not a neutral retrieval or passive repetition of an inert past. It is rather a selective process, or a cluster of processes, of recreating particular bits of the past for some purpose in the present” (p. 1). The authors divide this diverse topic of memory studies—and the nine chapters in this volume—into five categories. The first focuses on the most common method for studying memory, that is, studies of approaches that literati adopted to commemorate deceased figures. The second category emphasizes how social memory has shaped historiography and in turn, how this culturally constructed historiography has influenced the formation of social memory. Entries in the third category adopt reception studies to study memory in Chinese culture diachronically. The fourth category explores the mnemonic skills employed to enhance learning and master various texts. The chapters in the last category place new literary and cultural phenomenon in the context of old memory, illustrating how new trends gain legitimacy with the help of old and familiar figures, events, or phenomena.

In the first chapter, “Artful Remembrance: Reading, Writing, and Reconstructing the Fallen State in Lu Ji's ‘Bian wang’”, Meow Hui Goh discusses how Lu Ji 陸機 (261–303) investigated and reconstructed the demise of the Wu state (222–280) in the Three Kingdoms period (220–280). Lu emulated and manipulated the rhetoric of previous literary and historical works to express his own memory and opinions of the Wu state. In addition to referring to past works, Lu Ji, a major official who had personally experienced the downfall of the Wu state, innovatively advanced his own explanations for its decline. Explanations that reflected his deep contemplation of the factors that contributed to the collapse of Wu. In reviewing the contributions of loyal officials and ordinary people to the brilliant history of Wu, Lu makes the argument that the loss of “human co-ordination” was the key to the demise of the Wu state. Lu Ji takes this opportunity to favourably compare his family members, such as Lu Xun 陸遜 (183–245) and Lu Kang 陸抗 (226–274), with such Three Kingdom luminaries as Zhou Yu 周瑜 (175–210), in an effort to defend the reputation of his family. Lu Xun and Lu Kang were major advocates of Wu's controversial western campaign, and Lu Ji is anxious to argue that Wu fell because of the loss of human co-ordination, and not because of the strategy against Shu (221–265) his family members helped devise. Lu therefore uses selective memory of the history of the state of Wu to explain its downfall while defending the reputation of his family.

Chapter Two, Wendy Swartz's “Intertextuality and Cultural Memory in Early Medieval China: Jiang Yan's Imitations of Nearly Lost and Lost Writers”, investigates Jiang Yan's 江淹 (444–505) imitations of Sun Chuo 孫綽 (314–371), Xie Hun 謝混 (ca. 381–412), and Xu Xun's 許詢 (ca. 326–after 347) poems. Because their original poems have mostly been lost, Jiang Yan's imitation poems are one of the few sources for these poets. However, Jiang's imitation of Sun and Xie only included certain aspects of their works and poetic features. Jiang's imitation of Sun's poems has many allusions to the Zhuangzi 莊子, but Sun's extant works use various materials from the Classic of Poetry (Shijing 詩經), Laozi 老子, Zhuangzi, and Classic of Changes (Yijing 易經), as well as Buddhist texts. Jiang's imitation, which reflects his own understanding of literary history, therefore does not fully demonstrate the complexity and diversity of Sun's poetry. Similarly, Jiang's imitation of Xie Hun's poetry is very different from other accounts of Xie. In imitating Xie's poem, Jiang includes allusions to the Laozi and Zhuangzi but only very limited depictions of nature and remarkable sights. By contrast, Xie's extant poems, such as “Touring West Pond” 遊西池詩, contain substantial descriptions of nature and have almost no philosophical allusions. This contrast probably reveals that the contemporary conventions around composing xuanyan poems influenced Jiang Yan's imitation writing. Both Sun and Xie have some extant writings for discussion and comparison, but Xu Xun does not have any complete poems available to us. Literary history often depicted Xu as a lofty recluse, and Jiang's poetic imitation of Xu, unlike his imitation of Sun and Xie, concurred with Xu's received image. Jiang adopts allusions from the Zhuangzi and from Ji Kang 嵇康 (ca. 223–ca. 262) [also known as Xi Kang], emphasizing transcendence and loftiness. Jiang's imitation saves Xu's poetry from being forgotten to Chinese literary history. Readers can compare this analysis of the culture of imitation poetry with Swartz's longer argument about intertextuality in her monograph on reading and writing in early medieval China.Footnote ¹

The third chapter, Jack W. Chen's “On Mourning and Sincerity in the Li ji and the Shishuo xinyu” is a discussion of the relationship between ritual and sincerity from the vantage point of memory, inspired by Michael Puett's work on classical Chinese ritual.Footnote ² Chen initially explores the role that ritual played in memory formation, arguing, “Ritual is what restructures memory, and what is more, becomes the very structure of memory that allows one to pass through its trauma and live” (p. 66). Chen uses Record of Ritual (Liji 禮記) as an example of the highly conventional cultural forms and routines that have often been associated with ritual. However, ritual also includes elements of affective sincerity, triggering deep emotional responses to traumatic memory and demanding from the mourner a balance between trauma and affect.Footnote ³ The ritual procedures and practices recorded in the Liji also influenced later writings, such as A New Account of the Tales of the World (Shishuo xinyu 世說新語). In discussing the representations of mourning services in this work, Chen contrasts the ritual convention of “filiality while alive” (shengxiao 生孝) represented by He Qiao 和嶠 (d. 292) with the affective sincerity of “filiality unto death” (sixiao 死孝) represented by Wang Rong 王戎 (234–305). Mourning services not only reflected family members’ sorrow, but were also evaluated and commented on by community members. The mourners had to regulate both their private grief and its external manifestation in actions and speeches. Mourning rituals were performed by both one's family members and friends and created social memory within a community. Rituals, affective sincerity, and character evaluation contributed to the perception of filial piety, personal reputation, and the furthering of the official career of the mourners.

Wang Ping's contribution, “‘Making Friends with the Men of the Past’: Literati Identity and Literary Remembering in Early Medieval China”, examines issues of identity and remembrance with respect to the three Caos, i.e. Cao Cao 曹操 (155–220), Cao Pi 曹丕 (187–226), and Cao Zhi 曹植 (192–232), and the Eastern Jin (317–420) literati Xie Lingyun 謝靈運 (385–433). Their literati identity was determined by the figures with which they were associated, and it was demonstrated and fulfilled through communication and interaction within that group. By writing poetry, Cao Cao expressed his political ambitions and personal thoughts, and demonstrated his social engagement. Cao Pi and Cao Zhi often wrote poems and exchanged them with their friends and officials. Their depictions of social circles and gatherings gradually shaped the identity of the Jian'an (196–220) writers. A few centuries later, while in exile, Xie Lingyun wrote “On the Wei Crown Prince's Ye Collection” 擬魏太子中集. In this poem, Xie reaffirms and idealises the Jian'an literati community, imitating Cao Pi's tone to further consolidate Jian'an literati identity, establishing a collective bond, and boosting the cultural confidence of individual literati. Because the status of the Xie family gradually declined during the Liu Song era, Xie Lingyun's memory of historical figures “constitutes also a cohesive force between him and the group from which he had drifted apart in time and space” (p. 118). The idealised Jian'an community seems to illustrate Xie's ideal of the lord-patron relation. This chapter could be paired with Xiaofei Tian's “Plague and Poetry: Rethinking Jian'an”,Footnote ⁴ as both examine the role that the Cao family and Xie Lingyun played in the construction of the Jian'an lore.

Tian has also contributed a chapter to this volume: “Yu Xin's ‘Memory Palace’: Writing Trauma and Violence in Early Medieval Chinese Aulic Poetry”, which focuses on Yu Xin's 庾信 (513–581) poetic representation of his traumatic memories.Footnote ⁵ This chapter uses the term “memory palace” to describe “Yu Xin's accessing of the southern textual past and his obsessive construction of a new house of memory during exile” (p. 126). Tian explores how Yu substantially challenged the established approaches toward writing aulic poetry to create a personal expression of his own traumatic experience. Yu Xin's “Yonghuai” poems, such as the poem on Wang Zhaojun 王昭君 (ca. 54–19 bce), not only communicate with Shen Yue 沈約 (441–513) and Xiao Gang's 蕭綱 (503–551) poems on the same historical figure, but also challenge the traditional understanding of the Wang Zhaojun story. In a similar fashion, Yu Xin's seventeenth “Singing of My Cares” (“Yonghuai” 詠懷) poem subverts readers’ horizon of expectation for traditional topics and de-familiarises established poetic practices to express his traumatic memories of the past. Yu twists and transforms the genres of “high climbing” poetry and frontier poetry in a startling deconstruction of poetic conventions. For Yu, the traumas of the past are a vehicle for expressing contemporary grief. Tian points out that delay and repetition are two of the major characteristics of trauma, and this delay and repetition add new layers of meaning in different contexts. Yu used violence to deconstruct the norms of aulic poetry, innovatively reinterpreting past texts in the light of his experience of life in the South.

In the sixth chapter, “Structured Gaps: The Qianzi wen and Its Paratexts as Mnemotechnics”, Christopher M. B. Nugent examines versions of the Thousand Character Text (Qianzi wen 千字文) from Dunhuang and Japan and the commentary associated with the Qianzi wen to understand the “mnemotechnics” of the text. The Qianzi wen, a set of parallel rhymed couplets on daily life topics, was used to teach students characters and classical works. Short rhymed couplets were easy to remember, and were used as building blocks to prepare students to read classical works ranging from poetry to historical accounts to philosophical writings. This chapter first discusses the author and composition methods of Qianzi wen, before turning to the circulation of the annotated versions. The annotations and commentaries explain words by placing them in a larger cultural milieu, citing classical works. Nugent compares two annotated versions from Dunhuang and Japan and observes, “The former appears to be an expansion of the latter. The Ueno annotations are always shorter and much more tightly written” (p. 178). Instructors and learners could adopt the Qianzi wen to embed reading and writing practices, expanding both the scope of the text and one's individual knowledge. This chapter also compares Qianzi wen with Liuzi qianwen 六字千文, finding that the latter was easier for beginners because it offers more concrete information on vocabulary, syntax, and grammar points. However, Liuzi qianwen is difficult to remember and recite, characters used in Liuzi qianwen break rhymes and parallelism, and some characters are repeated. Nugent believes that despite the apparent relative ease of the Liuzi qianwen, it was in fact taught only after students were familiar with the Qianzi wen.

Alexei Kamran Ditter's chapter, “Genre and the Construction of Memory: A Case Study of Quan Deyu's 權德舆 (759–818) Funerary Writings for Zhang Jian 張薦 (744–804)”, emphasizes the important role that genre plays in forming and developing memory in Quan's offering eulogy (jiwen 祭文) and epitaph (muzhiming 墓誌銘) for Zhang. Ditter examines the literary and cultural tradition of these two genres, then investigates how these genres shaped Quan's memory of Zhang by exploring their word choice and narrative features. This chapter also examines the differences between the two genres in terms of the relationship created between authors and their subjects, the materials they draw on to narrate the lives of the deceased, their production process, and the “objectives” of these texts.Footnote ⁶ Quan uses different approaches in his epitaph and offering a eulogy to emplotment the amount of space devoted to Zhang's career, and the rhetoric used to comment on it.Footnote ⁷ Ditter argues that there are two implications to this case study: “The first is that an author's choice to use a particular genre to commemorate a deceased individual represents in practice a choice regarding how the memory of the deceased would be constructed. The second implication of this study is that in these compositions, in addition to subjects, genres shaped the construction of the memory of others as well, not least of all the author” (p. 210).

Anecdotes do not have the status of official histories, but can provide important supplementary information, and are sometimes the precious few records we have of certain historical figures and events. Anecdotes and their role in constructing memory are the subject of the eighth chapter, Sarah M. Allen's “Figments of Memory: ‘Xu Yunfeng’ and the Invention of a Historical Moment”. Allen focuses on the three short stories about Xu Yunfeng 許雲封 collected in Yuan Jiao's 袁郊 (fl. 840) anecdotal collection Ganze yao 甘澤謠. These stories concern how he obtained his name from the famous poet Li Bai 李白 (701–762), how he joined a group of young musicians who performed in front of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang 唐玄宗 (685–762) to celebrate Precious Consort Yang's 楊貴妃 (719–756) birthday; and how his flute suddenly split after he played only one stanza. Allen argues that these events probably did not happen as narrated, but were invented by Yuan Jiao based on the social memory of Xuanzong's reign. Allen uses this case to examine how even dubious anecdotes shaped later cultural understandings of the past, as well as how they preserved and added information on historical figures and events. The unsubstantiated information conveyed through literary representations of history provided material for Yuan Jiao's anecdotes.

In the ninth chapter, “The Mastering Voice: Text and Aurality in the Ninth–century Mediascape”, Robert Ashmore investigates the concepts of a “rhetorical minister” 詞臣 and proxy texts through a case study of Li Shangyin's 李商隱 (813–ca. 858) commemoration of his tutor Linghu Chu 令狐楚 (766–837). A “rhetorical minister” often drafted writings in the voice of other figures. Linghu was a well-known writer of such proxy texts and gained prominence through his skill, becoming an exemplary rhetorical minister. He taught Li the techniques of writing “four-six style” text, and the latter wrote two collections in this style: “Fannan Four-six” 樊南四六 and “Fannan Four-six B” 樊南四六乙. With Linghu's guidance, Li became an expert in writing both the guwen 古文 style and the four-six-style texts. As Ashmore analyzes:

Linghu Chu taught Li Shangyin a contemporary official writing style, and in return, Li commemorated and praised Linghu.

The nine essays adopt a wide range of approaches, but they are connected by theories of memory. Wendy Swartz and Ping Wang focus on cultural memory; Jack Chen and Xiaofei Tian, traumatic memory; Alexei Ditter and Robert Ashmore, textual memory; Sarah Allen, social memory; Meow Hui Goh, collective memory; and Christopher Nugent focuses on mnemotechnics. These memory theories and approaches have also been used in researching Western literature and culture, and one wonders how transposing them to Chinese literature and culture illuminates both Chinese literature and memory studies—that is, how do the Chinese case studies enrich, diversify, or complement to memory studies? This well-organised and edited volume lays a solid foundation for further research applying memory theory to Chinese literature and culture.