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dankodes * I found the best option for the weekly reminder emails, via Gmail. The external service options are more involved than our purposes require. Does anyone know anything about how to arrange an Apps Script? Basically all it has to do is tell ten people, on Saturdays, to come and get their juice/poems.
Until someone knows what to do there, I'll send out manual messages weekly. If you'd like to receive these and are not getting them, please let me know.
* If you haven't read it yet, chapter one, on tetrasyllabic shi poetry, in How to Read Chinese Poetry is hugely useful for the Book of Odes, imo.
* Remember you can also look at How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context.
* IF YOU HAVE FRIENDS WHO MIGHT LIKE TO JOIN or have other ideas, please let me know on this post.
* Every week I search the poems' English results to see if I can find any scholarship or neat bits and pop the results in Resources. Here is this week's collection.
**NEXT BATCH JUNE 7.**
Until someone knows what to do there, I'll send out manual messages weekly. If you'd like to receive these and are not getting them, please let me know.
* If you haven't read it yet, chapter one, on tetrasyllabic shi poetry, in How to Read Chinese Poetry is hugely useful for the Book of Odes, imo.
* Remember you can also look at How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context.
* IF YOU HAVE FRIENDS WHO MIGHT LIKE TO JOIN or have other ideas, please let me know on this post.
* Every week I search the poems' English results to see if I can find any scholarship or neat bits and pop the results in Resources. Here is this week's collection.
**NEXT BATCH JUNE 7.**
Re: 259. 崧高 - Song Gao
Curiously, the most visible statements on authorship in these songs are not in the “Airs of the States” (guofeng) that speak intensely, and often emotionally, of personal experience. Instead, they are found mostly in the “Major Court Hymns” (daya) that arose within the ritual institutions of the Zhou royal court. In particular, songs 259 (“Song gao”) and 260 (“Zheng min”) both conclude with a statement that “Jifu made a recitation” in order to influence a named historical figure. These two songs are understood as compositions by Yin Jifu (“Overseer Jifu”), a high Western Zhou official and military leader from around 900 BC who is briefly mentioned also in other sources. In each song, the final quatrain that mentions Jifu as the “reciter” is taken to define the entire text as Jifu’s personal expression. In addition, since Han times the next two songs in the Shijing – 261 (“The Jiang and the Han”) and 262 (“Han yi”) – have been likewise attributed to him. While the authorship of songs 261 and 262 was questioned by later imperial scholars, that of “Song gao” and “Zheng min” remains universally accepted.3A close analysis of the four texts raises doubts about Jifu as the author of any of the four songs. With regard to “Song gao” and “Zheng min,” one observes: first, in both songs, the concluding claim about Jifu is formally distinct from the preceding text, separated by a different rhyme; second, in each song, the concluding claim about Jifu as “reciter” (not to mention author) is not related to anything else in the preceding lyrics; third, the songs have no coherent voice but are composite structures of different voices and idioms, including direct royal speech, proverbs, language from administrative documents, poetic phrases found elsewhere in the Shijing, and narrative prose; fourth, while each text is a composite structure of such different voices, the two texts are also considerably different in nature and do not suggest a common author; fifth, both songs show a number of parallels especially to “The Jiang and the Han” and “Han yi”, two texts that are even more densely modeled on administrative documents; sixth, while quotations of “Song gao” and “Zheng min” abound in early texts, these quotations never include the final quatrains; seventh, no early reference to the texts mentions Jifu as author; eighth, when Jifu is mentioned in other sources, he appears as a military leader but never as an author of texts; and ninth, self-referential notions of authorship are exceedingly rare in Shijing – and in pre-imperial sources altogether – suggesting that authorship was not an integral property of such poetry.4Taken together, these observations make a compelling case against Jifu as the author of “Song gao” and “Zheng min,” not to mention “The Jiang and the Han” and “Han yi.” But what do they tell us about the raison d’être for the final quatrains in “Song gao” and “Zheng min”? First, it may be that “Jifu has made a recitation” does not refer at all to authorship but to the mere recitation (song) of the text. Second, the final quatrains are most likely later (if still pre-imperial) additions to the two songs: instead of marking authorship, they merely connect exemplary – and highly non-individual – court compositions with the voice of an exemplary official of high status. As such, the final quatrains of the two songs are retrospective constructions of remembrance and interpretation; they reveal how a later audience imagined the performance of ritual communication at the Western Zhou royal court.