Canons and Canonicity in the Ch'ing

Given the lack of a canonical definition of the origin and function of tz'u analogous to that possessed by shih (however restrictive the latter may have proved for both practice and interpretation), it is small wonder that so much critical energy came to be expended on providing some self-definition for the song lyric. Nor, furthermore, that the urgency—if not insecurity—endemic to its situation ran the risk of ossifying those definitions into rigid, exclusionary "schools" for whom only certain individuals could serve as exemplary models or "patriarchs." Nor, finally, that this discussion developed into a preoccupation with aspects of prosody, language, and style that marked a domain to which the other genres did not care to lay first claim.^[54]

[53] Included in Chao Tsun-yüeh, "Tz'u-chi t'i-yao," pt. 3, Tz'u-hsüeh chi-k'an 2, no. 3 (April 1935): 83, 88–90. Li O, who together with Cha Wei-jen had provided annotations to Chou Mi's Chüeh-miao hao-tz'u , comes to a similar conclusion in his preface to the Ch'ün-ya tz'u-chi . He argues there that because the song lyric is intrinsically a low form, if it does not possess elegance as its woof (wei ), it will lose its correctness (cheng ). As cited by Lung Mu-hsün, "Hsüan-tz'u piao-chun lun," p. 20.

[54] It should go without saying that this emphasis on the stylistic distinctiveness of tz'u was shared by all critics, whatever their aspirations for the position of the genre. One Ch'ing anthology, for example, that explicitly places itself in the tradition of the Ts'ao-t'ang shih-yü —against which scholars promoting a more elegant notion of the form railed bitterly—provides one of the most succinct statements to this effect. This is the Ts'ao-t'ang ssu-hsiang in four fascicles, edited during the K'ang-hsi period by Ku Ts'ai. The title of the volume, of course, acknowledges its model, as does its specification of a certain number of topics and organization into chüan by length of tune (with hsiao-ling defined as consisting of any lyric up to 59 words, chung-tiao as 60 to 92 words, and ch'ang-tiao as anything longer; Ku observes that Chu I-tsun criticized these limits, but Ku defends himself by saying that "since these names exist, it can be done"). At the same time, however, theintroductory principles to the collection offer interesting refinements on some of the standard war-horses of the critical tradition. On the theory of the evolution of genres, for example, Ku writes that "when shih died out and then tz'u were composed, it was not that shih died out, but that the means of singing shih died out. And when tz'u died out and Northern and Southern ch'ü were composed, it was not that tz'u died out, but that the means of singing tz'u died out." He also presents a rhetorically effective argument for the specificity of the song lyric as a genre:

If one can use T'ang shih to write tz'u , then one's tz'u will be excellent; however, tz'u are definitely not shih . If one can use Sung tz'u to write ch'ü , then one's ch'ü will be excellent; however, tz'u are definitely not ch'ü . For tz'u has a form and structure peculiar to tz'u , and a music and sentiment peculiar to tz'u . If it resembles shih then it will be too literary, and if it resembles ch'ü then it will be too unpolished, and both of these are defects. As a comparison, if one uses the Shih [-chi ], the Han [shu ], and the Eight Great Masters to write pa-ku-wen , it will certainly be excellent, but will pa-ku-wen thereupon become ku-wen ?

Included in Chao Tsun-yüeh, "Tz'u-chi t'i-yao," pt. 1, Tz'u-hsüeh chi-k'an 1, no. 1 (April 1933): 96, 95.

Wu Hsiung-ho, in discussing the aftermath of the Ming dynasty Chang Yen's distinction between wan-yüeh and hao-fang , argues that it was made both with a very personal sense of style in mind—as opposed to a more generalizable doctrine—and also on the basis of a limited acquaintance with tz'u poets of the Sung, and that it was only later that critics like Wang Shih-chen (1634–1711) transformed features originally intended merely to characterize particular individuals into schools with identifiable "patriarchs."^[55] Even more central to this new discourse on the song lyric was Wang's contemporary Chu I-tsun (1629–1709), who has traditionally been credited with the resurgence of tz'u to the critical and literary-historical arena after several centuries of relative slumber.^[56]

[55] In his Hua-ts'ao meng-shih , for example, Wang Shih-chen identifies his fellow natives of Chi-nan, Li Ch'ing-chao and Hsin Ch'i-chi, as the exemplars of the two styles, respectively. Wu's discussion also touches on the various ways in which other critics disagreed with or modified the distinction (T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , pp. 158–64).

As Wu points out earlier, the notion of "school" goes back to Lü Pen-chung's (1136 chin-shih ) grouping of twenty-five poets into the Chiang-hsi shih-p'ai with Huang T'ing-chien as its patriarch, based on similar practices already common in Ch'an hagiography (p. 152). A version of this can be seen in Wang Cho's linking of tz'u poets with either Su Shih or Liu Yung in Wang's Pi-chi man-chih (ca. 1145–49) (ch. 2, included in Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien , 1.1b; also noted by Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , p. 155). But the precedent for establishing genealogies is, of course, of much older vintage, having been set early in the sixth century by Chung Jung in his Shih-p'in , which identified poets being ranked as belonging to the tradition of either the Shih-ching or the Ch'u-tz'u .

[56] Impressive evidence to this effect strikes the eye immediately when one opens T'ang Kuei-chang's Tz'u-hua ts'ung-pien . Of the eighty-five tz'u-hua included, eleven date from the Sung, two from the Yüan, four from the Ming, and all of the rest from the Ch'ing.

The reasons behind this renaissance, and Chu's particular contributions toward it, are too numerous and complex to be examined here.^[57] Among others, one might cite the widespread fascination during the early Ch'ing with antiquity in general and the Sung dynasty in particular; the regional interest of Chu, a native of western Chekiang, in the many Southern Sung poets from that same geographical area;^[58] his discovery and reprinting of Chou Mi's Chüeh-miao hao-tz'u ; and the contemporary preoccupation, profoundly conservative at its core, with collecting, defining, and mastering the entire literary tradition. This effort shapes his Tz'u-tsung , compiled by 1678.

It is well known that Chu compiled this anthology in twenty-six fascicles (with four more added by Wang Sen [1653–1726]) of song lyrics from the T'ang through the Yüan dynasties on the basis of a limited number of individual collections, and even fewer anthologies, that were circulating at the time. His introduction comments on the losses that he knows to have occurred (to which later scholars have added), lists the volumes he has been able to peruse, and catalogs the various options other editors have employed in recording the name, title, place of birth, and so on, of the poets included. Also well known is Chu's desire to revise significantly the image of the tz'u prevalent at the beginning of the Ch'ing, requiring a small, profound, and oft-cited revision of literary history: "People now say that one must praise the tz'u of the Northern Sung; however, only in the Southern Sung did tz'u reach the ultimate craft, and only at the end of the Sung did it reach the ultimate transformation. Chiang Yao-chang [Chiang K'uei] is the most outstanding [poet of the genre]. What a pity it is that of Pai-shih's [Chiang K'uei's] yüeh-fu in five fascicles today only twenty-odd pieces have survived."^[59]

Wang Sen's preface to the Tz'u-tsung articulates the theoretical program of the anthology at somewhat greater length. He begins by offering a famous attack on the view of literary history that had characterized the song lyric as the "remnant" of the shih , an attitude encapsulated in the very title of the much-reviled Ts'ao-t'ang shih-yü . Long-and-short verses, he opens, have been around as long as shih , so the tz'u can boast a lineage as venerable as that of its better-placed cousin. Moreover, the

[57] Madeline Chu touches on some of these issues in her article "Interplay between Tradition and Innovation: The Seventeenth-Century Tz'u Revival," in Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews 9 (1987): 71–88.

[58] Chu articulates this interest clearly in his preface to Meng Yen-lin tz'u , as cited by Lung Mu-hsün, "Hsüan-tz'u piao-chun lun," pp. 18–19.

[59] Chu I-tsun, Tz'u-tsung (1691; rpt., n.p.: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1973) 1.5b.

familiar evolution from ancient verse to yüeh-fu to regulated verse to tz'u , he declares, has produced forms that are like horses with "separate bits but galloping side-by-side, not one in front and the other behind. To say that shih degenerated to become tz'u or to consider tz'u as the remnant of shih is not an argument that penetrates the whole."^[60] After touching on the vibrant but qualitatively mixed early history of the genre, he identifies his patriarch: "Chiang K'uei of Hsiang-yang emerged, with lapidary verses and refined words that return to purity and elegance. There-upon Shih Ta-tsu and Kao Kuan-kuo flanked him on either side. Chang Chi and Wu Wen-ying took him as master first, and Chao I-fu, Chiang Chieh, Chou Mi, Ch'en Yün-heng, Wang I-sun, Chang Yen, and Chang Chu studied him afterward."^[61] Whatever disagreements one might have with the hierarchy Wang provides here—and they have been numerous—the point remains that he is singling out tz'u poets from the Southern Sung who embody in different ways ideals of elegance and refinement that he and Chu are seeking to establish as the preeminent style for the genre.^[62] Their instrument will be this anthology, which he hopes "may eliminate at once the vulgarity of the Ts'ao-t'ang ; those who write to music will then know the orthodox tradition [tsung ]."^[63]

The language Wang employs here and the critical order of evaluation he presents are reminiscent not only of descriptions of the Kiangsi poetry group,^[64] but of Kao Ping's categorization of the T'ang poets as well, which in turn was heavily influenced by Yen Yü's example. And the selection of song lyrics for the volume itself, however hampered by the limited number of sources and deficient in text-critical oversight,^[65] also reflects the priorities that the two compilers established. Whereas some poets only have one song lyric each included, those from the

[60] Chu I-tsun, Tz'u-tsung 1.2a–2b.

[61] Ibid. 1.3a–3b.

[62] Chiang K'uei was a particularly appealing model because, as Lin Shuen-fu puts it, his life was one "almost entirely devoted to the cultivation of art." See The Transformation of the Chinese Lyrical Tradition: Chiang K'uei and Southern Sung Tz'u Poetry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 58.

[63] Chu I-tsun, Tz'u-tsung 1.5a–5b.

[64] As noted by Lung Mu-hsün, "Hsüan-tz'u piao-chun lun," p. 17.

[65] Ting Shao-i, who compiled a Ch'ing tz'u-tsung pu in 1894 (rpt., Peking: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1986), says that he has corrected many—but not all—of the errors in the Tz'u-tsung , which he attributes both to the unavailability of good editions of Sung and Yüan tz'u and to Chu's failure to compare versions from one edition to the next. In his T'ing-ch'iu-sheng-kuan tz'u-hua , as cited by She Chih, "Li-tai tz'u-hsüan-chi hsü-lu," pt. 5, Tz'u-hsüeh 5 (1986): 257.

Southern Sung mentioned in the introduction and preface are heavily represented in the anthology; the thirty-two tz'u of Chiang K'uei, for example, probably constituted a significant proportion of the total number of works by the poet that Chu had seen, and the lesser members of the group are present in similar depth. The collection's insistence on the stylistic distinctiveness of the song lyric as a genre confirms what John Guillory, drawing on Bakhtin, has argued to be fundamental to the process of canon-formation, the marking of a language that can be defined as the specifically "literary" coin of a hermetic, privileged community and the final expunging of the popular or "vulgar" traces of the form.^[66]

Arguments waged, however, concerning the precise nature of that language. However unsuccessful Chu I-tsun may ultimately have been in eliminating "heterodox"—whether "vulgar" or "heroic"—styles of tz'u and controlling the quality of lyrics written according to "orthodox" models, his influence on the subsequent history of the genre is undeniable. Although critical opinion agrees that followers of the Che school eventually declined into a vacuous or, worse, "lascivious," preciosity, Chu's framing of the discourse was adopted by later scholars who were adamantly opposed to his aims. The very fact that critical discussion coalesced into schools with distinct programs may reflect to a certain extent the power of Chu's example. Moreover, many of his key assumptions remained intact, albeit developed in very different ways. Thus, scholars associated with the Ch'ang-chou school that flourished a century later might have rejected his notion of what was orthodox but not the presumption that some orthodox or canonical style existed and should be promulgated. Chou Chi (1781–1839) in his Tz'u-pien , for example, clearly identifies a tradition beginning with Wen T'ing-yün that he considers cheng and one starting with Li Yü that is pien , and he meticulously lists the poets that fall under either category. Other critics, following a model developed earlier for discussing and classifying painters, which itself was borrowing a precedent established in Ch'an Buddhism, divided tz'u poets into a Northern and a Southern tradition (tsung ) and, much as had been the case in the visual arts, found the latter decidedly superior.^[67]

The Ch'ang-chou critics differed significantly from the earlier Che school, however, in the manner by which they sought to establish the canon of the song lyric. Rather than insisting on the peculiar distinctiveness of tz'u , scholars like Chang Hui-yen (1761–1833) and Chou Chi

[66] See his "Canonical and Non-canonical: A Critique of the Current Debate," ELH 54 (1987): 483–527.

[67] As noted by Wu Hsiung-ho, T'ang Sung tz'u t'ung-lun , p. 163.

sought to rehabilitate the genre by appropriating for it the hermeneutics that had developed in connection with the Shih-ching , thereby accommodating it to the established shih tradition. Thus, the inscription of the male gaze and the ascription of male desire to the languishing woman in lyrics by poets like Wen T'ing-yün could be re-viewed as the figuration of political concern about the state of the empire and the frustration of a loyal official at his inability to do anything about it. The details of this program have been discussed at length by Chia-ying Yeh Chao^[68] and need not be recapitulated here. Suffice it to say at this point that although Chang Hui-yen has been faulted both for his outrageously improbable allegorical interpretations and for assuming that a valid comparison could be made between the song lyric and the Book of Songs at all, the former had already been accepted practice for several centuries and the latter could be supported, as we have seen, by several textual precedents within the literature on tz'u as well.