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Chinese Theories of Literary Creation
A Historical and Critical Introduction
Zong-qi Cai, issue editor
Duke University Press, 2024
This supplement to volume 20 of Prism is the first installment of a four-part project, with roughly concurrent publication in Chinese and English. The works in this project, which include Chinese monographs by Prism’s editor Zong-qi Cai, cover Chinese theories of literature, literary creation, interpretation, and aesthetic judgment. This supplement, specifically, covers topics that include the inadequate presence of China’s literary theory and literary creation in English-language scholarship; an analytical and analytical-reconstructive approach to Six Dynasties comprehensive theories that pieces together isolated comments made by multiple authors over different times into a “theoretic collage” the philosophical foundations laid by pre-Qin and Han-Wei thinkers for the subsequent rise of literary creation the burgeoning impact of Buddhist thought on the theory of artistic creation; and a reflection on and comparison of the distinctive features of major Chinese theories of literary creation to their Western counterparts.
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front cover of The Matrix of Lyric Transformation
The Matrix of Lyric Transformation
Poetic Modes and Self-Presentation in Early Chinese Pentasyllabic Poetry
Cai Zong-qi
University of Michigan Press, 1997
Pentasyllabic poetry has been a focus of critical study since the appearance of the earliest works of Chinese literary criticism in the Six Dynasties period. Throughout the subsequent dynasties, traditional Chinese critics continued to examine pentasyllabic poetry as a leading poetic type and to compile various comprehensive anthologies of it.
The Matrix of Lyric Transformation enriches this tradition, using modern analytical methods to explore issues of self-expression and to trace the early formal, thematic, and generic developments of this poetic form. Beginning with a discussion of the Yüeh-fu and ku-shih genres of the Han period, Cai Zong-qi introdues the analytical framework of modes from Western literary criticism to show how the pentasyllabic poetry changed over time. He argues that changing practices of poetic composition effected a shift from a dramatic mode typical of folk compositions to a narrative mode and finally to lyric and symbolic modes developed in literati circles.
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