The Alter Ego Perspectives of LiteraryHistoriography

Min Wang

The Alter Ego Perspectivesof Literary Historiography

A Comparative Study of Literary Historiesby Stephen Owen and Chinese Scholars

123

Min WangDepartment of East Asian Languages and CivilizationsHarvard UniversityCambridge, MAUSA

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Foreword

Literary historiography has been dominated by nineteenth century historicism

from the beginning until the 1960s. The first Chinese literary history was written

by a Japanese sinologist at the end of the nineteenth century (in 1898). Likewise,

Chinese literary history writing has followed basically the same mode in terms of

literary historiography. The past two decades have witnessed a boom of rewriting

Chinese literary histories by the sinologists in the West, especially in the US.

Among them, the latest one is The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature(2010) compiled by Kang-i Sun Chang and Stephen Owen.

This book is an attempt to gain insight into the “alter ego” perspectives of

literary historiography in the field of Western sinology. It will also focus on the

latest accomplishments of Stephen Owen, including The Norton Anthology ofChinese Literature, The Late Tang: Chinese Poetry of the Mid-Ninth Century(827–860). Specifically, the present study aims to investigate the theoretical,

methodological, and empirical implications of their practices on literary histori-

ography. The research is focused on the new notions of the Cultural Tang and

discursive communities proposed by Stephen Owen.

The present study has selected two case studies in the Cultural Tang: the first is

a combination of the diachronic and synchronic analyses of discursive commu-

nities in the subgenre of huaigu poems, or “Poems of Meditations on the Past”; the

second is an investigation into the interrelationships between temple visiting

poems and the notion of the Cultural Tang, different from the conventional literary

historical categorization. In light of stylistics and corpus linguistics for the first

case study, the linguistic conventions are associated with the inertia of the Tang

literary tradition diachronically. Based on this, the trio methodological mode is

proposed, e.g., the stylistic, textual, and socio-cultural dimensions. In the case of

temple visiting poems, the reconstruction of the Cultural Tang is investigated

among different discursive communities and power relations in the field of literary

production. The shared literary values are interrelated with the discursive com-

munities among which texts are produced, circulated, and transmitted synchroni-

cally. Diachronically, the changing literary values and literary reconstructions are

v

coordinated with the roles of poets, the institutions, and dispositions of the social

forces in the Cultural Tang.

The major findings of the present study are as the following: (1) The Chinese

literary history has moved from the mimic hybrid mode to the predominant modes

of genre evolution (the “autonomy” or intrinsic mode) and socio-historical

determinism (the “heteronomy” or extrinsic mode), and on to exploring new

perspectives (the integrated mode) within the old paradigm (the nineteenth century

historicism). It can be grouped into four periods, three modes, and one paradigm.

(2) In comparison to domestic literary histories, Chinese literary histories in

English have mutated from the sinologist encyclopedic trans-cultural type to the

literature-based deductionistic mode, to a Chinese American sinologists period,

and finally to a new boom since the 1990s. Mair’s “iconoclastic” kaleidoscope or

miscellaneous view of Chinese literature has gone beyond the traditional classical

literature scope. Owen’s representation of the Cultural Tang has surpassed the

dynastic history and the conventional teleological mode. (3) The single narrative

mode of literary historiography is related to the nineteenth century historicism

paradigm, whether it to be with respect to the autonomous, heteronomous, or

integrated mode. The new modes in the West are influenced by the diverse ten-

dencies in intellectual history. There was a fusion of the theoretical paradigms, the

multi-dimensions of linguistics, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction,

cultural studies, and new historicism. The paradigm of literary historiography is

moving from macro to micro, from general to diversified, from static to dynamic,

from teleological to non-teleological. (4) Stephen Owen’s literary historiography is

influenced by new historicism, linguistics, semiotics, and sociology. He has pro-

posed the notions of “the Cultural Tang” and “Discursive Communities”. The

Tang literary culture is transferred from court-centeredness to outside-the-court,

getting out of the confines of dynastic periodization. It is not a single narrative

story, but a multifarious one addressing the multiplicity, diversity, and intricacy of

the Cultural Tang—the history of literary culture.

On the basis of the present findings, the study reached four conclusions. First, a

comparative analysis of the major Chinese literary histories in China and in the

West brings to light the alter ego perspectives of Stephen Owen in literary his-

toriography. The alter ego perspectives among the Western sinologists represent

transcultural and comparative approaches as otherness of Chinese literary histor-

iography. Owen has advocated micro literary histories, virtual history of historical

moments, and a history of literary culture, etc., which Chinese literary historians

tend to disregard. Owen’s literary historiography is represented in the concepts of

“the Cultural Tang” and “Discursive Communities”. On the other hand, literary

historiography in China remains in the framework of socio-political determinism.

Second, the methodological and empirical implications for writing Chinese literary

histories lie in the literary historical reconstruction in the interrelationships

between literary history and other histories. Yet, literary history is gaining

autonomy and independence from external histories, such as dynastic and political

histories. The tendency is fragmentization–transforming from the macro per-

spective to the micro perspective. Three dimensions of methodology in literary

vi Foreword

historiography are proposed, e.g., the stylistic dimension, the textual dimension,

and the socio-cultural dimension. Third, an overview of the literary histories

reveals the accomplishments and limitations of the modes of literary historiogra-

phy in China and in the West. They fall into the taxonomy of literary historiog-

raphy, including five aspects—the scope, depth, format, scheme (or figura), andpurpose (or intention). Fourth, the underlying interrelationships between the

modes of literary historiography and the intellectual history have been investi-

gated. Literary history, as part of intellectual history, has changed from the

national histories of nineteenth century historicism, to histories influenced by

formalism and Marxism, and still to new literary histories. The single narrative,

teleological history is replaced by bottom-up non-teleological history. Despite

some limitations, the present study may provide us with a better understanding of

the paradigm of literary historiography, help us gain insight into the different

modes and perspectives of literary historiography, and provide some theoretical,

methodological, and empirical implications for rewriting Chinese literary histories.

I would like to extend my sincere gratitude and immense thanks to my

supervisor Prof. Pan Wenguo, whose insightful comments, enlightening support,

keen editorial eye, and enthusiastic guidance gave me the strength I needed to

complete this book. His effective and encouraging supervision helped me face the

challenges and difficulties in the whole process of completing this book. Most of

this book was written between 2009 and 2010, during the academic year I was a

visiting scholar with the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at

Harvard University. My debt to my sponsor at Harvard, Prof. Stephen Owen, is

absolute, for his generosity, patience, and his insight into the Chinese literary

history writing. We had weekly discussions about my project for two semesters.

Prof. Owen also read part of the manuscript with scrupulous care.

I am additionally grateful to Prof. Victor H. Mair at the University of Penn-

sylvania for having conversations with him about his invaluable contributions to

Chinese literary history at Philadelphia in 2009. My thanks go also to Prof. Tian

Xiaofei from Harvard University, Prof. David Damrosch from Harvard University,

Prof. Feng Shengli, Prof. Tu Weiming from Harvard University, and Prof. Paul W.

Kroll from University of Colorado. I owe also intellectual debts to Prof. Geoffrey

Leech, Prof. Mick Short, and Prof. Elena Semino at Department of Linguistics and

the English Language in Lancaster University in UK, where I was a visiting

academic researcher in 2008.

Part of Chap. 3 has been presented at the 126th Annual Convention of the

Modern Language Association of America (MLA) held at Los Angeles between

January 6 and 9, 2011. I am indebted to Prof. Marshall Brown, Editor-in-chief of

The Modern Language Quarterly for his advice on my presentation. My special

thanks go to three friends from Harvard University, University College London,

and Northeastern University who have helped me polish the language.

Foreword vii

Preface I

The first Chinese literary history was An Outline of the History of ChineseLiterature written by the Russian sinologist V. P. Vasil’ev, published by Peters-

burg Press in 1880. In 1882, A Brief History of Ancient Sino Literature by the

Japanese sinologist Suematsu Kentyo (末松谦澄) was published. The first Chinese

literary history in the English speaking world was written by Herbert Allen Giles,

published in 1901. According to the latest scholarship, the first Chinese literary

history by Chinese scholars was A Dynastic Literary History written by Dou

Shiyong (窦士镛) in 1897 and published in 1906. Giles proclaimed that his

History was “the first attempt made in any language, including Chinese, to pro-

duce a history of Chinese literature.” It can be inferred that these scholars were

unaware of others’ work in other countries and that their individual research was

representative of their own national scholarships. For example, the research of Dou

Shiyong followed the traditional categorization of jin, shi, zi, ji and the format of

Chinese poetic criticism, which is different from the work of others such as Giles.

After the 1911 Revolution, the traditional mode of scholarship had ceased to be the

convention and, instead, Western modes of literary history were gaining ground in

the field of Chinese literary historiography. A negative consequence of this

development is that it curtailed the Chinese tradition of doing literary history and

so increased the obstacles to formulating an independent system. More positively,

however, it diversified the perspectives and methodologies of literary historiog-

raphy, promoting the scale, breadth, and depth of the study and research of

Chinese literary history.

From the twentieth century onwards, Western academia in the Arts and

Humanities has been characterized by its focus on theoretical issues, awareness of

theoretical construction, and the occurrence of new paradigms. These character-

istics applied in many subjects alike, so literary historiography was no exception.

Consequently, Chinese literary historiography assumed a new mode within a few

decades, these being influenced by the underlying historical forces driving trans-

formations in the analytical frameworks used in many scholarly disciplines. On the

one hand, Chinese scholars were trying to adjust to Western trends; on the other

hand, they were embedded within the confines of Chinese thoughts of

ix

Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism—“literature carrying Tao/morality” (“文以

载道”), “poems expressing wills” (“诗言志”), “understanding the writers and their

times (“知人论世”), and “Without a word, as far as dissolute.” (“不著一字, 尽得

风流”) They were struggling and becoming entwined with the new traditions of

Western ideas, presenting a dynamic panorama.

Regarding the abundant collection of Chinese literary histories published in the

past 100 years, I have assumed that it is worthwhile to do a comparative study

from the perspective of the history of literary history. I have accumulated much

relevant material from both China and abroad for such a project, but with too many

responsibilities, could not spare enough time to proceed with this partial departure

from my main area of expertise (that is to say Linguistics and Translation Studies).

Fortunately, among my Ph.D. candidates, I found a young scholar–Min Wang

who has taken great interest in Chinese classical literature. Her expertise in this

area and her excellent proficiency in English made her a most suitable researcher

for this project. Even more fortunately, during her doctoral years, she went to

Harvard University to pursue her research as a visiting scholar. With Stephen

Owen as her sponsor at the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilization,

she met many sinologists and collected abundant first-hand documents in the US.

She also had access to the manuscript of The Cambridge History of ChineseLiterature, then in the process of being published, which brought a new light to

her research.

In the process of reviewing and researching the literature, we found the project

too vast to be covered in a single dissertation. As work proceeded, the topic was

further refined, from what would have been a comparative literary history study,

encyclopedic in scale, to a study of the influence of Western paradigms and

perspectives on the study of Chinese literary studies crystalizing around the key

issues that emerge from this examination of this diverse set of intellectual

traditions.

Among these emergent concepts, Min Wang focused on two: the “Cultural

Tang”; the notion of “Discursive Communities”. These two concepts are central to

the reflections of Owen in the field of classical Chinese literature, especially Tang

poetry. They characterize his unique perspective. Min Wang applied these con-

cepts to produce a fascinating analysis of two subgenres—“poems of meditations

on the past” and “temple visiting poems”, subgenres which are rare in Western

poetry.

Through detailed theoretical and textual analysis, she argues the need for new

understandings of the paradigms employed when “doing” literary historiography.

She proposed a trio methodological mode which employs the stylistic, textual, and

socio-cultural dimensions. The modes of literary historiography are classified into

five aspects—scope, depth, format, scheme (or figura), and purpose (or intention).

These are her new contributions to literary historiography. She also argued that

“The single narrative, teleological history should be replaced by bottom-up

non-teleological history.” Her investigation of the alter ego perspectives of literaryhistoriography identifies a number of theoretical, methodological, and empirical

implications for Chinese literary history studies.

x Preface I

MinWangwas well-appraised for her dissertation defense and awarded her Ph.D.

She received a grant from the National Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation

for her research project in literary history in 2012. Now, the world famous Springer

Press is going to publish her book, introducing her research to the Western world.

I am writing this preface to express my congratulations.

Wenguo Pan

Professor of International College of Chinese Studies

East China Normal University

Shanghai

People’s Republic of China

Preface I xi

Preface II

Call for Writing a New Literary History

of Literature in Chinese

Dr. Min Wang’s monograph The Alter Ego Perspectives of LiteraryHistoriography: A Comparative Study of Literary Histories by Stephen Owenand Chinese Scholars is a pioneering monograph in this field, at least to my

knowledge, especially by a young scholar from mainland China. I make such a

bold and generous evaluation for several reasons.

First of all, as we all know, in the current age of globalization, serious literature,

especially classical literature, is suffering from severe neglect as pop culture and

other means of writing such as Internet writing become popular. Today’s young

people would rather spend more time reading online than sit in the library reading

scholarly books or learned journals. Min Wang, though, when she was faced with

writing her dissertation, finally made up her mind to focus on a topic in classical

literature which would be both time-consuming and written for a small audience.

This monograph is an expanded and revised version of her doctoral dissertation.

Second, Min Wang’s schooling was transferred from English language and

literature to translation of Chinese classics to English during her undergraduate

studies and graduate studies, and she, herself, has been teaching English as a

foreign language at Shanghai Jiao Tong University for years. However, she chose

a very difficult topic for her doctoral dissertation: literary historiography and, more

specifically, Stephen Owen’ view of literary historiography. That is, she had to

have a good grasp of literary historiography not only in the English speaking

world, but also in Chinese, the latter of which is especially difficult for an English

major in China. Nevertheless, she overcame all these difficulties and finally suc-

ceeded in fulfilling her Ph.D. studies and in writing this book.

In view of the above two aspects, I cannot resist writing this short preface to her

monograph, as I have seen the entire process of writing this monograph from its

very beginning. Also, since literary historiography in comparative and world lit-

erature studies is a research interest that I share with Dr. Wang, I would also like to

xiii

take the opportunity of writing this preface to express some of my own ideas about

this cutting edge topic.

As we know, the writing of literary history, or literary historiography, has

become an old topic since the reception theorists and then the New Historicist

theorists started to challenge the legitimacy of literary history and to discuss it. In

today’s era of globalization, however, it may appear that talking about new literary

historiography seems to be out of fashion as literary study in the context of

globalization appears less and less attractive to literary scholars, but it is still of

distinct significance. However, the recent rise of world literature has more or less

helped comparative literature and literary study in general to step out of this crisis.

In speaking of the globalization of literature and culture, we cannot but reflect on

what has happened or is still happening to the current tendency of the English

language proper. English as a lingua franca in the present era has been undergoing

a sort of splitting or metamorphosis: from one (standard) English into many

(indigenous) english(es) as English has become a major world language by means

of which different national cultures could produce their own literatures in English

or “english.” So writing an English literary history today means two things:

writing about the historical development of the imperial (British) English litera-

ture, and about the historical development of the (international) English literature

which is colored with various colonial and postcolonial elements. Through the

joint efforts made by scholars in the above fields, international English literature

has become a sub-discipline in literary studies.

It is true that almost all the scholars of the humanities are now aware that

globalization is not just a contemporary event, but rather a historical process

started several centuries ago. In speaking of the globalization in culture, we can

say that the process started even earlier. If we cannot deny the fact that writing a

literary history in English has long crossed the boundary of nations and countries,

then what is the situation of writing a literary history in Chinese? This is what the

present book spent much space dealing with in a comparative way. Although there

have been numerous books published on Chinese literary history in China, there

have so far been few written in English; especially from a comparative perspec-

tive. Among all the sinologists, Stephen Owen is one of the most prominent,

largely because he both has a profound attainment of classical Chinese literature

and a wide perspective on world literature. Through Min Wang’s comparative

studies of different views on literary historiography, we can see more clearly why

Owen stands out in his literary perspectives, especially in his writing of Chinese

literary history. Actually, his practice of literary history has rewritten an entire

literary culture from a comparative perspective.

In my opinion, as Chinese scholars of literary studies, we should also think of

writing a new literary history in the Chinese language. For of all the published

books on Chinese literary history, none of them has really touched upon this topic

although this is greatly needed in the present era. Since Chinese is also, like

English, more and more splitting, from one standard Chinese into many Chinese(s)

of indigenous accents and even grammatical rules, it is moving toward a real major

world language to be used not only by domestic Chinese people but also by all the

xiv Preface II

overseas Chinese as well as those non-Chinese speaking people who either take

Chinese as their research area or teach it as a foreign language. Similarly, since the

end of the 1970s, along with the large-scale Chinese migrations overseas, more

and more Chinese people have been writing literary works in this language. If we

add to this its frequent use in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Chinese

communities in North America, Australia, and Europe, we can find for certain that

there will appear excellent literary works deserving of study and inclusion in a new

literary history in Chinese. In this way, we can, for the time being, define Chinese

literature in two senses: one is the literature produced in China’s mainland, Hong

Kong and Taiwan in Chinese, which is a people’s national language, and the other

is in the literatures produced overseas in Chinese by writers for whom it is also the

mother tongue. In this respect, the study of Chinese literature should surely now

include all the literatures written in the Chinese language.

Although what I have said above has not been discussed in this book as it

focuses on the classical periods, I still think that this monograph has made itself

one of the pioneering books in this field, especially by a domestic Chinese scholar

who has conscientiously taken a global view and comparative approach in dealing

with the writing of literary history. I sincerely hope that future scholars will build

on this so that the writing of a new literary history in Chinese can be realized in the

not too distant future.

Ning Wang

Professor of Comparative Literature

Tsinghua University

Beijing

People’s Republic of China

Preface II xv

Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1 Background of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.2 Rationale for the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.3 Significance of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1.4 Outline of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2 An Overview of Chinese Literary History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

2.1 Definitions of Literary History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.2 Literary Histories Compiled by Chinese Scholars in Chinese . . . 14

2.2.1 The Hybrid Mode in the First Stage: 1904–1919

(the May Fourth Movement) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

2.2.2 The Evolution Theory Based Mode in the Second

Stage: 1919–1949 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

2.2.3 The Socio-Political Determinism Mode

in the Third Stage: 1949–1990s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

2.2.4 The New Perspective Mode in the Fourth Stage:

1990s–Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

2.3 Chinese Literary Histories Compiled by Japanese Sinologists . . . 31

2.4 Chinese Literary Histories Compiled by Western Sinologists

(Mainly in English) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

2.4.1 All-Inclusive Mode of European Sinologists

in the First Stage: 1900–1920s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

2.4.2 Literature-Based Deductionism Mode of American

Sinologists in the Second Stage: 1920s–1950s . . . . . . . . 35

2.4.3 The Period of Chinese American Sinologists

in the Third Stage: 1960s–1990s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

2.4.4 New Perspective Mode of American Sinologists

in the Fourth Stage: 1990s–Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

xvii

2.5 Conclusion of the Different Modes of Chinese

Literary Histories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

3 The Notion of Discursive Communities: A Case Study

of Huaigu Poems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

3.1 The New Notion of Discursive Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

3.1.1 The Notion of Discursive Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

3.1.2 Other Relevant Concepts in Literary Historiography . . . . 56

3.2 The Subgenre of Huaigu Poems and Discursive

Communities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

3.2.1 The Stylistic Dimension of the Alter Ego Perspective

in Literary Historiography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

3.2.2 The Stylistic Analyses of Huaigu Poems . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

3.2.3 Stylistics and the Stylistic Dimension

of the Alter Ego Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

3.3 The Implications of Discursive Communities on Chinese

Literary History Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

3.3.1 Traditional Approaches towards PMPs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

3.3.2 Marxism and the Chinese Literary History Studies . . . . . 78

3.3.3 New Approaches in Chinese Literary History Studies . . . 81

3.4 The Theoretical Implications of Discursive Communities . . . . . . 83

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

4 The Cultural Tang and Temple Visiting Poems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

4.1 The Cultural Tang and Temple Visiting Poems . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

4.1.1 The Notion of the History of Literary Culture

and the Cultural Tang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

4.1.2 The Spread of Buddhism of the Cultural Tang

and Temple Visiting Poems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

4.2 Temple Visiting Poems and the Beginning and End of

the Cultural Tang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

4.2.1 The Origin of Buddhist Poems Prior

to the Cultural Tang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

4.2.2 The Beginning of the Cultural Tang: Temple Visiting

Poetry Combined with Courtly Style Poetry . . . . . . . . . . 93

4.2.3 The End of the Cultural Tang: Temple Visiting Poetry

Filled with Personal Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

4.3 Literary Values and Conventions of Temple Visiting Poems. . . . 100

4.3.1 Temple Visiting Poems and the Court Culture . . . . . . . . 101

4.3.2 Temple Visiting Poems and the Transforming

Literary Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

4.3.3 Temple Visiting Poems and the Literati Culture . . . . . . . 106

xviii Contents

4.4 Temple Visiting Poems and the Field of Cultural

Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

4.4.1 Temple Visiting Poems and Power Relations

in the Cultural Tang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

4.4.2 Temple Visiting Poems and the Features

of the Literary Champ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

4.4.3 Temple Visiting Poems and Manuscript Culture . . . . . . . 121

4.5 Discussions and Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

4.5.1 Cultural Studies and the Field of Cultural

Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

4.5.2 Implications for Literary Historiography . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

5 The Alter Ego Perspectives and Literary Historiography . . . . . . . . . 131

5.1 Chinese Literary History and the Alter Ego Perspectives . . . . . 131

5.1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

5.1.2 Chinese Literary History and the Alter

Ego Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

5.1.3 The New Alter Ego Perspectives

and Their Implications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

5.2 The Theoretical Framework of Literary Historiography . . . . . . . 139

5.3 Literary Historiography and Intellectual History . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

5.3.1 Stage 1: Nineteenth Century Historicism:

Euro-Centrism, Romanticism, and Nationalism . . . . . . . . 143

5.3.2 Stage 2: Twentieth Century Modernism:

from Russian Formalism and New Criticism

to Structuralism and Marxism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

5.3.3 Stage 3: Post-1980s Postmodernism:

Neo-Historicism/Cultural Materialism and History

of Literary Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

5.4 Metahistoriography in Literary History Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

5.4.1 Epistemological Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

5.4.2 Methodological Implications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

5.4.3 Implications to the Paradigm of Literary

Historiography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

5.5 Canon Formation and Power Relations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

5.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

6 Conclusion and Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

6.1 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

6.2 Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

6.2.1 Theoretical Implications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Contents xix

6.2.2 Methodological and Empirical Implications . . . . . . . . . . 173

6.2.3 Metahistoriographic Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

6.3 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research . . . . . . . . . . . 175

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

xx Contents

Abbreviations

ATH Atomistic Historiography

AXH Axiomatic Historiography

CLH Chinese Literary History

DAH Descriptive-Analytical Historiography

DH Detached Historiography

DSH Descriptive-Synthetical Historiography

ENH Encyclopedic History

EPH Explanatory History

EXH External History

FH Factual Historiography

IH Internal History

LH Literary Historiography

SEH Sequential Historiography

STH Structural Historiography

SM Synthesis Mode

TH Topical Historiography

xxi

Tables

Table 2.1 The first stage of Chinese literary histories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Table 2.2 The second stage of Chinese literary histories . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Table 2.3 The third stage of Chinese literary histories . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Table 2.4 The fourth stage of Chinese literary histories . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Table 2.5 The Histories of Sino Literatureby the Japanese sinologists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Table 3.1 Huaigu Poems in Wen Yuan Ying Hua . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Table 3.2 Frequencies in Huaigu poems of the Chinese

and English versions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Table 3.3 Huaigu poems and temple visiting poems

in Ying Kui L€u Sui . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Table 4.1 Temple visiting poems in Wen Yuan Ying Hua . . . . . . . . . . 90

Table 4.2 Temple visiting poems and Huaigu poems

in Ying Kui L€u Sui . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Table 4.3 Poetic conventions of temple visiting poems . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Table 4.4 The field of cultural production versus

the old mode of analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

Table 5.1 Historicism and new historicism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Table 5.2 The five parameters of the theoretical framework

of literary historiography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

Table 5.3 The parameters of literary historiography in stage 1 . . . . . . . . 146

Table 5.4 The parameters of literary historiography in stage 2 . . . . . . . . 150

Table 5.5 The parameters of literary historiography in stage 3 . . . . . . . . 155

xxiii

Charts

Chart 3.1 High frequency Chinese characters in Huaigu poems . . . . . . . 63

Chart 3.2 High frequency English equivalents in Huaigu poems . . . . . . 64

Chart 5.1 The field of cultural production (Bourdieu)

and the literary culture (Owen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

Chart 5.2 Chart of the history of literary culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

xxv

Literary Terms

The alter ego PerspectivesCultural MaterialismThe Cultural TangGeistesgeschichtliche (German. intellectual history)Habitus (French. predisposition)Literary HistoriographyNew HistoricismProto-Professionalism

xxvii