China & Inner Asia: Table of Contents
Organizer: Ming Dong Gu, University of Chicago
Chair and Discussant: Michael Puett, Harvard University
In ancient China, the concept Wen in its broadest sense covers practically all aspects of natural phenomena and human culture: myriads of shapes and patterns of the natural world, miscellaneous customs and habits of a community, rules and rituals of social institutions, spoken and written language, music, songs, dance, painting, calligraphy, sculpture, architecture, handicraft, and last but not least, poetry and literature. As Liu Shipei points out, "During the times of the Three Ancient Kings, all that can be observed and imitated, and is endowed with orderly patterns, is called wen."
Recently, the concept of wen has aroused much interest among scholars of Chinese literature. Because of this interest, wen as a concept central to Chinese culture has been subjected to studies using philological, philosophical, historical, and comparative approaches. Its multivalence has been recognized as stretching beyond the obvious domains of writing and literature. Indeed, it has been found to have played such a significant role in configurating and texturizing aspects of Chinese culture that it lies at the heart of practically all aesthetic spheres of Chinese tradition: literature, painting, music, dancing, calligraphy, ritual and education, etc. Its all-encompassing function seems to entitle it to be called Chinese semiology in the Barthesian sense.
Continuing the research that has already been done by previous scholars and hoping to go beyond the efforts to define wen and to explore its impact on the nature of Chinese language and writing, our panel, focusing on wen as a semiotic function which has texturized aspects of Chinese culture, seeks to explore the impact of such texturizing efforts on the development of Chinese literary thought. While previous scholarship is concerned with the analysis of wen in relation to the nature of Chinese language and writing, our panel will examine the concept of wen and its relation to Chinese language and literary theory from the perspectives of signification, representation, and historical development. Whereas some scholars challenge the relativist paradigm which, by recourse to the notion of wen in Chinese as both natural pattern or configuration and as human writing or literature, views Chinese literature as something fundamentally different from literatures of the Western tradition, our panel attempts, through examination of wen and wen-derived concepts in traditional literary thought, to view wen as a semiotic function, and to argue that as a semiotic principle, the Chinese notion of wen is, in some crucial aspects, comparable to the modern notion of semiology. Finally, we would like to suggest that by viewing wen as a semiotic function we may be able to initiate dialogues between traditional and modern literary thought, Chinese and Western literary theories.
Zongqi Cai proposes to examine Liu Xie’s ample use of wen-related terms in the Wenxin diaolong, his consistent valorization of writing, and his ultimate purpose in so doing. Cai classifies the wen-related terms into three categories and argues that by stressing wen as a normative power capable of configurating all natural and human phenomena and all cultural and literary spaces, Liu Xie attempts to valorize belletristic writing and to raise it to a status comparable to that of Confucian canons. Through some detailed analysis of Liu Xie’s text, he will discuss the various strategies Liu Xie employs to valorize literacy over orality, and to privilege writing over speech.
Martin Kern will examine how the notion of wen evolves from a broad concept in the Eastern Zhou to a fixed generic term for belletristic writing in the Eastern Han. He argues that the conceptual change signifies more than a mere transformation of terminology from music and ritual to literary theory; it reflects the historical decline of music as the most treasured carrier of cultural expression and the ascendance of literature as its replacement. By focusing on how the Shijing was canonized, how literary texts were selected and evaluated, how authors were graded and hierarchized, and how genres of writings were classified, he will show that the changing notion of wen represents a fundamental cultural shift of emphasis from the immediacy of sensual representation to the mediated literary expression.
Ming Dong Gu suggests that ancient Chinese thought on the concept of wen anticipated the rise of modern semiology. In classical Chinese thought, wen is not merely a concept denoting belletristic writings, but represents a general system of signification and representation. By examining the myth and legends of Chinese writing and relevant passages in "Zhouyi xici," Yueji, Xun Zi’s "Yuelun," Liu Xie’s Wenxin diaolong, and relevant texts by other scholars in relation to modern theories of semiotics, he argues that the Chinese concept of wen represents a process of configuration and texturization of human culture. At the heart of wen-related concepts in ancient Chinese thought, precisely because wen is variously defined as pattern, structure, texturization, configuration, organization, orchestration, choreography, etc., it represents a semiotic function. As such it is not inappropriate to call wen the Chinese equivalent for "semiotics" or semiology.
Zong-qi Cai, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Liu Yie’s (ca. 465–ca. 522) Wenxin diaolong (The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons) is a grand endeavor to elevate the status of belletristic writings, or literature as we know it today, one that is analogous to those by his contemporaries Zhong Hong (?–518) and Xiao Tong (501–531). To attain their common goal, however, these three great critics take different routes. While Zhong writes a comprehensive commentary exclusively on belletristic poetry and Mao compiles a grand, exclusive anthology of belletristic writings, Liu chooses to write a rigorously systematic work to illuminate the making of belletristic writings and demonstrate their inherent links with the normative cultural configurations embodied in Confucian canons. Crucial to Liu’s endeavor is his rethinking of the wen and related terms through a consistent valorization of writing.
In Wenxin diaolong (The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons), the term "wen" (configuration, pattern) and wen-derived compounds are used prodigiously, covering the entire spectrum of critical inquiry from the cosmological origins of literature to the minute details of rhetoric. Conceived in a scheme of a narrowing scope of reference, these terms fall into three broad categories that respectively center on: (1) the wen that betokens the configurations of the human world embodied in Confucian canons and, as such, is co-extensive with those of heaven and earth as the Dao’s outer manifestions; (2) the wen that denotes the fine configurations of oral and written expressions in non-belletristic as well as belletristic genres; and (3) the wen that exclusively refers to the elegant configurations of a written, belletristic composition.
By tapping the polysemy of wen and calling into use its three categories, Liu establishes a noble lineage of cultural transmission from the Dao the cosmological ultimate to the Confucian canons down to post-Han belletristic traditions—a lineage predicated on the notion of writing as a normative power to configure all spaces, natural or human, broadly cultural or narrowly literary. By stressing the centrality of writing in this lineage, Liu aims to elevate belletristic literature, the most refined form of writing, to a status nearly comparable to that of Confucian canons. Since this valorization of writing is so crucial to Liu’s attempt to canonize belletristic literature, it is little wonder that he would valorize literacy over orality, writing over speech, at every opportunity.
In his use of the three categories of wen, we can discern Liu’s efforts to valorize writing over speech by various strategies. When he describes the wen of the first category, he focuses on the "silent" scripts of Yi jing (Book of Changes) as the prime example of the normative wenzhang, and makes only passing comments on "shengchiao" (teaching by making the name and acts of the ruler heard), the primary means of instituting and enhancing ethico-socio-political order in pre-Qin times. When he examines the wen of the second category, he treats many of oral-based genres as if they were purely written documents. Instead of exploring their oral and aural dimensions, he often merely discusses their meanings as written records. Even when he acknowledges the elements of music and verbalization in an ancient genre, he tends to stress that these elements are to disappear as the genre evolves into its mature form in later times. In observing the wen of the third category, he preoccupies himself solely with issues pertaining to belletristic written compositions. When he comes to discuss the musicality of language (rhyme, assonance, alliteration, etc.) he approaches the issue, not from the perspective of oral performance, but from the perspective of composing a written text. For him, all the musical elements are to be exploited by the writer and the reader, either silently or through self-directed chanting, to enhance their inward envisagement of a written work. In other words, Liu treats all musical elements merely as aesthetic coordinates to be utilized within the broader framework of visual imagination of a written work.
Martin Kern, University of Göttingen, Germany/University of Washington
The notion of wen ("pattern") undergoes significant changes from Eastern Zhou through Eastern Han times when it eventually becomes fixed as the generic term for "literature," in particular "refined literature." Before becoming predominantly related to writings, terms like wen, wenzhang, or wencai belong to the discourse on ritual and music where they denote normative patterns of ritual order, ornamental accomplishment, and social distinction. The conceptual change implies more than a transfer of terminology from ritual musical to literary theory; the latter gradually bursts out of the former, reflecting the historical decline of music as the most distinguished carrier of cultural expression and its replacement by literature. The "Great Preface" of the Shijing stands paradigmatically for this process. The changing notion often, therefore, represents the fundamental and ultimate cultural shift from the immediacy of sensual representation to the mediated reality of literary expression—a turn that is connected to the gradual unification of the script, the establishment of the centralized bureaucratic state, and the emergence of the identity of the individual literary author who as the poeta laureatus is going to replace the music master as the official embodiment of civil accomplishments. Qualifying texts, discussing the needs and possibilities of genres of writings, grading authors according to their literary accomplishments, as well as establishing a classified imperial library all testify to the same historical shift by which wen achieved its final significance.
Ming Dong Gu, University of Chicago
The Chinese concept of wen has been given great importance in the discussion of Chinese literary and aesthetic thought. Much attention has been paid to wen as a noun, as different forms of art, and as humanly constructed end-products. I propose to explore the implications of wen as a verb, as a process of cultural texturization, and as a semiotic principle.
I wish to argue that in many ways, the ancient Chinese concept of wen anticipated the emergence of semiology. In classical Chinese thought, wen is precisely a general system of signification and representation in addition to being wenzhang or writing, and wenxue or literature. The Chinese character wen, whether it is the earliest oracle bone form or the modern form, is a criss-crossing of a few strokes, which shows a process of configuration. Xu Shen’s definition of wen reveals that even the character itself contains a process which may be viewed as a structuration of signs or a primitive form of semiotics. Ancient Chinese legends attributed the origin of Chinese language to the eight trigram created by Fu Xi, to the tying of rope-knots, a way of keeping records employed by the legendary Shennong for his rule, and to Hetu or the "Diagram of the Yellow River" and Luoshu or the "Picture of the Luo River." Modern scholars dismiss these legends as groundless fiction. I think otherwise. These legends are not entirely the results of wild imagination. In fact, they reveal a truism that at the beginning, any language was only a system of signs, by which I do not mean written symbols but icons, index, tokens, and other ways of using representations as communicative and expressive symbols. Another legend of how Cang Jie created Chinese characters by observing the footprints of birds and beasts testifies to the same semiotic principle. Liu Xie was intuitively aware of this semiotic principle in his Wenxin diaolong. In his opening chapter "Yuan Dao" he traced the wen of heaven and earth, the wen of flora and fauna, and finally settled on the wen created by human beings as a system of signification and representation. On various other occasions, he talked explicitly about the setting forth of wen or pattern as a process of configuration, or in modern terms, as a semiotic undertaking.
Early Chinese thought reveals a leap from being able to perceive natural shapes and patterns of the natural world to the acquisition of the ability to texturize the world around human beings into cultural artifacts, a leap which marks the conscious beginning of not only culture but also semiotics. In this gigantic leap, wen is no longer the perceived shapes and patterns, but has become a semiotic function which aims at a correlation between that which represents and that which is represented. In this semiotic process, wen has become a verb which means "to structure, configurate, and texturize." Wen, coupled with some other concepts, produces some of the most important compound concepts in Chinese literary thought. By examining relevant passages in early Chinese literary thought, I want to argue that these compounds hide beneath their surface a mental function which works according to the most basic semiotic principle: "Mere is no meaning which is not designated" (Barthes). It is only in this context that wen can variously be defined as pattern, structure, configuration, organization, orchestration, choreography, and texturization. As such it is essentially a semiotic principle by which humans turn natural material of the universe into material constructs of arts. When we view wen as a semiotic principle, it is small wonder that it appears to be the most important factor in the making of music, song, poetry, dance, other arts, and culture and civilization in early Chinese thought. Of the wen-related concepts, wenxin and wenqi are perhaps the most important. In terms of semiotic function, we may view them respectively as "to texturize the mind" and "to semioticize consciousness." Wenxin seems to be the root of culture and the beginning of arts. From the semotic perspective, we may try to understand the title of Liu Xie’s Wenxin diaolong as: "to configurate the mind [is like] carving the dragon." In a like manner, we may understand Cao Pi’s wenqi as semiotic chora—the semioticized outcome of the non-expressive totality of the mind.
In terms of the configurated mind and semiotic chora, I will show that ancient Chinese conception of the origin of literature and arts, poetry, dance, painting and music is essentially concerned with the same thing—human consciousness; various forms of art differ from each other only in their forms of manifestation. As some ancient Chinese thinkers show, sound in their patterned form is music; words in their set order become poetry; movement in its choreographed form is dance. All emanate from the inner movement of the mind in relation to external stimuli—an insight to be found in "Maoshi daxu," "Yuelun," and Yueji, and emphasized in the observations by other thinkers like Liu Xie, Yang Xong, Fu Wuzhong, Liu Xizai, Fang Dongshu, Mi Youren, et al., who concur that the basic forms of art, music, songs, poetry, painting, calligraphy, dance, drama, are but perceived expressions of the mind in different forms. From this point of view, I have good reasons to call wen the Chinese equivalent for "semiotics" and representation.