Organizer and Chair: Mark Edward Lewis, University of Cambridge
Discussant: Michael Nylan, Bryn Mawr College
In the pre-imperial period texts were collectively produced by generations of disciples through a continuous process of (re-)assembling and (re-)writing. The attribution of texts to specific individuals, their reading as a product of those individuals' subjectivities, and their closure as fixed objects took place only in the late Warring States period and the first empires. These changes divided the process of textual production between the roles of author and editor, and it rendered problematic the "authenticity" or "reliability" of texts. Our panel proposes to examine some of the reasons for and consequences of these developments.
The three papers each deal with a different segment of the literary field-verse, history, and the editing of texts and anthologies. They all examine the interplay between texts as a collective activity shaped through the coming together of multiple voices, and texts as the distinctive product of a single consciousness. Mark Lewis's paper will deal with the manner in which the practice of assembling verse anthologies encouraged the idea of poetry as the product of a distinctive, authorial voice. Li Wai-yee's paper will examine the interplay between the two activities of assembling earlier texts and giving expression to the self in Sima Qian's creation of a new model of historiography. Haun Saussy's paper will examine changes in the "residual" role of editor/anthologizer brought about by the Qin bibliocaust and the Han establishment of a canon of fixed, "sacred" texts.
The Chuci and the Origins of Authorship
Mark Edward Lewis, University of Cambridge
The creation of an "individual voice" in verse and the grounding of meaning in that voice depend upon the formation of poetic anthologies. Only in the grid of writing and reflexive referentiality, where a second poem is read in terms of a first or the first re-read in terms of the second, can poems separate from the social context in which they were originally performed and appear as projections of an autonomous. interiorized subjectivity. In China, this development was associated with the creation of the Chuci anthology around the biography of Qu Yuan. In contrast, the "focussed intents" expressed in the Shi jing were attributed to a normative, sage consciousness or an office. In projecting a body of verse onto the failed career of a lone, mistreated minister, early Han scholars re-defined the relation of men to texts, and created a new social role available to literary men.
The Han formation and reading of the Chuci established several basic features of the subsequent development of verse anthologies and poetic hermeneutics. First, it made the individual author the standard category of selection, and established the poetic anthology as the conventional genre for recording a life. Second, it created a model in which the private voice of authorship was strongly associated with public failure, or with those aspects of life removed from the public sphere. Third, it established a strong association between the collection of an anthology and the death of the poet.
System and Differences in the Shiji
Wai-yee Li, Princeton University
Sima Qian's statements regarding his intentions and aspirations-the final chapter of the Shiji and letter to Ren An-present two conceptions of his work. One asserts his role as transmitter and anthologizer who "brings together and synchronizes" the Hundred Schools. The other emphasizes the lyric impulse, the expression of frustrations and anguish that shapes his work. These concerns are reflected in two traditions of interpreting the Shiji. One examines textual derivations and queries discrepancies between the Shiji and its sources or within the Shiji. The other subsumes differences under system and self-expression, tracing organizational categories and stylistic nuances that establish Sima Qian's distinctive vision of history.
The latter is a more judicious synthesis of the two aforementioned conceptions. However, "system" and "self-expression" must be redefined. System lies at the crossroads of the collective and the personal, where authorial voice emerges through the transmission and collection of texts. Influenced by the dominant modes of cultural synthesis and correlative thought of the era, Sima Qian's categories, models, and typologies transformed source texts into elements in his system of historical knowledge. Differences among sources and their opacity also produced skepticism regarding the object of historical knowledge: its nature, transmission, and evaluation. Recognizing that remembrance is potentially fortuitous and judgment arbitrary, he pondered the grounds of interpretation, striving to create a system that encompassed differences and opacity. The tensions between system and differences define the parameters of historical knowledge and authorship in the Shiji.
The Unreliable Anthologists: Liu Xiang and Liu Xin
Haun Saussy, Stanford University
The careers of the scholars Liu Xin and Liu Xiang reveal much about the changing meaning of anthologies and authorship in Han China. The Lius-father and son-were bibliographers, authors, anthologists, and editors whose work covered the entirety of written knowledge in their day. They were also later accused of the greatest act of forgery in Chinese history. The inter-relations of their activities and the reasons for the later accusations make the Lius an ideal case for examining the transformation of authorship and editorship engendered by the establishment of an imperial literary policy.
In the Warring States period, texts had invariably been collective. Philosophical writings were compiled as anthologies and re-worked by generations of disciples, as were the purported textual remains of the Zhou that formed the ru canon. This relation of scholars to texts was transformed by the Qin bibliocaust and the Han establishment of a state canon. The former changed texts from a living heritage, to be transmitted and adapted, into a lost tradition, to be retrieved and restored. The latter led to the search for fixed, "correct" versions of texts, and rendered "masterless" texts problematic. As a result, the roles of author, editor, and anthologist-which had previously been aspects of a single function-separated, and the routine re-working of texts became a disputed act. The association of the Lius with Wang Mang further confounded the issue of textual reliability with political treason.