Revisiting Liu Xie’s concept of the genre and its place in the early medieval Chinese literary theory

Affiliation:
National Research University Higher School of Economics, Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Institute of Asian and African Studies
Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Address: Moscow, Russian Federation

Journal name

Vostok. Afro-Aziatskie obshchestva: istoriia i sovremennost

Edition

Issue 1

Pages

93-121

Abstract

The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons (Wen Xin Diao Long) by Liu Xie (465/466– 520/522) overcomes other similar treaties of that time by its size (about 40 thousand characters), by the complexity of the structure, and as well by the depth of working out the issues of literary theory and practice. That’s why the Liu Xie’s literary concept is usually considered as a kind of quintessence of Chinese literary mind of the early Middle Ages. This article is an attempt to challenge this thesis and demonstrate that Liu Xie was far ahead of his time. Analyzing the Liu Xie’s genre concept, the author focuses on two major points. The first is the connection of the genre with categories of a higher or general order, with the notions of traditional Chinese literary types or modes of wen and bi and with the form of artistic speech. The second is the hierarchy of genres specified by the order of their description in the treatise. The author rebuts the idea that Liu Xie divided the literature into wen and bi on the basis of rhyme only. She argues that he considered the сontent of a literary work to be more important than its form for defining its genre.

Keywords

Liu Xie,The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, Wen Xin Diao Long, Chinese poetics, Chinese literature, medieval Chinese literature

Received

20.03.2019

Publication date

21.03.2019

Number of characters

97915

Cite

GOST	Stezhenskaya L. Revisiting Liu Xie’s concept of the genre and its place in the early medieval Chinese literary theory // Vostok. Afro-Aziatskie obshchestva: istoriia i sovremennost – 2019. – Issue 1 C. 93-121 [Electronic resource]. URL: https://vostokoriens.jes.su/S086919080003962-5-1 (circulation date: 24.04.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S086919080003962-5
MLA	Stezhenskaya, Lidiya "Revisiting Liu Xie’s concept of the genre and its place in the early medieval Chinese literary theory." Vostok. Afro-Aziatskie obshchestva: istoriia i sovremennost 1 (2019):93-121. DOI: 10.31857/S086919080003962-5
APA	Stezhenskaya L. (2019). Revisiting Liu Xie’s concept of the genre and its place in the early medieval Chinese literary theory. Vostok. Afro-Aziatskie obshchestva: istoriia i sovremennost (1), pp.93-121 DOI: 10.31857/S086919080003962-5

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1	The concept of genre accompanied Chinese literary thought since the very appearance of the written tradition in China. The oldest written monuments The Most Venerable Book (Shang Shu) and The Book of Songs (Shi jing) specify the genre of the texts that composed them [Riftin, 1994, p. 267–270]. Up to the early twentieth century the traditional Chinese poetics was based on the concept of the canonized genre. The idea of a proper set or system of traditional genres was formed in the early Middle Ages. Outlining the composition of literary genres, medieval Chinese literary critics and theorists thus gave the definition of the notion of literature of their time [Smirnov, 2000, p. 265–289]. This literature may be called classical or elitist. Traditional literary criticism ignored a significant layer of national Chinese literature represented by the so-called “low genres”.
2	In a series of historical and literary sources of the early Middle Ages, the treatise of Liu Xie (465/466 – 520/522) The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons (Wen Xin Diao Long, hereafter – The Dragon…) occupies an exceptional place. None of the other works of this period can compare with The Dragon... neither by size (about 40 thousand characters), nor by the complexity of the structure, nor by the depth of working out the issues of literature theory and practice. Moreover, the organization and vastness of the text of The Dragon... makes it the most important source of our knowledge of the early medieval Chinese literature.
3	Hence the researcher may have a temptation to present the literary concept of Liu Xie as a kind of quintessence of early medieval Chinese thought (see, for example, the monographs of Vladimir Iosifovich Braginsky who represented the “averaged” poetology of the Arabic, Indian and Chinese zone-shaping literatures [Braginsky, 1991; Braginsky, 2004]). Chinese medieval poetology was examined on the basis of the treatise by Liu Xie Wen Xin Diao Long, in which “most of the concepts of Chinese poetology are integrated into an orderly whole” [Braginsky, 1991, p. 54].
4	In this article, I will try to challenge this thesis about the representativeness of The on ... for the literary thought of the early Middle Ages. Liu Xie was significantly different from his contemporaries. I will focus on the two points in my study of the genre concept of The Dragon... The first is the connection of the genre with categories of a higher or general order, with the notions of traditional Chinese literary types or modes of wen and bi and with the form of artistic speech. The second is the hierarchy of genres specified by the order of their description in the treatise.
5	The study of The Dragon ... in Russia will soon overstep a hundred-year boundary and, of course, it is not limited to the specified issues. The main attention of soviet and Russian literary theorists-sinologists was directed to the general aesthetic evaluation of the treatise. One of the steps on the way to understanding the content of Liu Xie’s aesthetic concept was the explanation of his principle of hierarchy of genres and that category itself. From this groundwork I will proceed in my article, in some cases expanding the context of the problem, and in others, on the contrary, referring to details that have not yet been considered in Russian literary studies of China.
6	The description of specific genres occupying almost half of the treatise leaves no doubt that Liu Xie in his work relied on a certain concept of the literary genre. The interpretation of the content of this concept or its equivalents by Liu Xie remains a debated issue of modern Chinese literary studies and the history of Chinese literature. It is considered that the enumeration of genres in the treatise sets the hierarchy of medieval Chinese genres, that is, represents their classification.
7	Important advantages of this classification are its diversity and unity of principles. As a rule, they are specified in the following provisions. All the genres of Liu Xie are grouped according to the large categories of contemporary literature – elegant literature (wen) and simply literature (bi). The order of enumeration of genres is determined by their literary qualities. More literary or elegant genres are explained earlier than less literary ones. When enumerating genres, their thematic proximity is taken into account, so many genres are described in pairs. When genres are less close in content, the chapter gives their generalized representation. In the description of the literary genre, the lexical explanation of the genre name and its definition is given first. Then the stylistic features of the genre are explained. Further, the historical origins of the genre and its evolution are indicated. Finally, information on the best works in the specified genre is provided.
8	In the title of the treatise Wen Xin Diao Long (lit. The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons), two themes are distinguished: literariness (i.e., the feature of being literature) and literary work. Liu Xie clarifies the literary concept mainly in the first five chapters of the treatise, as well as in the final chapter 50, Statement of intent (Xu zhi). Liu Xie’s literariness reflects an understanding of this attribute in China during the second half of the fifth century – the early sixth century. In modern studies, this literariness is treated as elegance and literature itself – as elegant literature represented by a limited set of the literary genres contemporary with Liu Xie. The Liu Xie’s genre theory is to be studied within a more general problematics: the relationship between the historical concept of elegance and his concept of artistry. The core of the latter forms the concept of aesthetic [Khalizev, 2000, p. 31–33, 82, 104–105].

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