CLASSICAL CHINESE POETRY

This graduate seminar aims to introduce students to poetry and poetics in the eighth century, the High Tang. We will trace the changes and transformations of poetic language and social functions of shi and fu poetry, in conjunction with the expansion of the literary scene from the court/capital to the community of serving officials, who traveled throughout the empire, wrote about their “provincial” experiences, and formed literary connections with one another through poetry. We will examine major poets, including Zhang Jiuling, Meng Haoran, Wang Wei, Li Bai, and Du Fu, and think about what happens to their poetry and their imagination of the empire when the court/capital started to lose its status as the center of cultural production and the arbiter of tastes. Students will also learn methods, sources, and bibliographic traditions as part of the study of medieval literature. We will explore questions such as: What can eight-century anthologies tell us about contemporary literary tastes? How were literary collections of eighth-century poets preserved, transmitted and reconstituted in later periods? How might the “High Tang” look different when we take into consideration of changes in values and bibliographic interventions of later periods?

Prerequisite: students should have at least two years of experience learning literary Chinese.