Cecile Chu-chin Sun - Pearl from the Dragon’s Mouth: Evocation of Feeling and Scene in Chinese Poetry

Pearl from the Dragons Mouth

Pearl from the Dragons Mouth

Evocation of Scene and Feeling in Chinese Poetry

Cecile Chu-chin Sun

CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
ANN ARBOR

Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program.

MICHIGAN MONOGRAPHS IN CHINESE STUDIES

ISSN 1081-9053

SERIES ESTABLISHED 1968

VOLUME 67

First Edition 1995

Published by Center for Chinese Studies,

The University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1290, U.S.A.

Copyright 1995

Center for Chinese Studies

The University of Michigan

Printed and made in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences -

Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives ANSI/NISO/Z39.48-1992.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sun, Cecile Chu-chin.

Pearl from the dragons mouth:

evocation of feeling and scene in Chinese poetry /

by Cecile Chu-chin Sun.

p. cm.

(Michigan monographs in Chinese studies)

ISBN 0-89264-110-X (alk. paper)

1. Chinese poetry --History and criticism.

2. Nature in literature.

3) Emotions in literature.

I. Title. II. Series.

PL2308.5.N3S86 1994

895.11008--dc20 93-50078

CIP

ISBN 978-0-89264-110-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-472-03800-8 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-472-12740-5 (ebook)
ISBN 978-0-472-90135-7 (open access)

The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

TO MY PARENTS

Sun Kang-tseng

and

Lu Wei-ju

Contents

SHANG (YIN)	17511112 B.C.
CHOU	1111256 B.C.
Chun-chiu (Spring and Autumn) period	722481 B.C.
Chan-kuo (Warring States) period	403221 B.C.
CHIN	221207 B.C.
HAN	206 B.C.A.D. 220
Former Han	206 B.C.A.D. 8
Hsin (Wang Mang)	822
Latter Han	25220
THREE KINGDOMS	220280
Wei	220265
Shu Han	221264
Wu	222280
CHIN	265419
Western Chin	265316
Eastern Chin	316419
SOUTHERN AND NORTHERN DYNASTIES	420589
Sung	420478
Chi	479501
Liang	502556
Chen	557589
Northern Wei	386534
Northern Chi	550557
Northern Chou	557580
SUI	589618
TANG	618907
FIVE DYNASTIES	907959
SUNG	9601279
YAN (MONGOL)	12801368
MING	13681644
CHING (MANCHU)	16441911
REPUBLIC	1911

Note

Of the Six Dynasties

This book is written to provide readers with a better grasp of what goes on at the heart of Chinese poetry and poetics. Specifically, it is about what Chinese poets and critics themselves have perceived poetry to be throughout the entire Chinese critical tradition.

Virtually all poets and critics, for over two millennia, have agreed that the intrinsic nature of Chinese poetry lies in two distinct but inseparable elements. One of these refers to the poets thoughts and feelings, to their memory as well as their imagination, expressed in the poetic medium. The other refers to the physical context depicted in a poem, including not only what the poet captures in his immediate reality, but the landscape and locale that the poet remembers and imagines. These two elements have been generally known as ching (feeling) and ching (scene) since the mid-thirteenth century. The integration of feeling and scene is fundamental to the subtlety and, more importantly, to what I would describe as the living sensuousness of Chinese poetry. A well-prepared scene usually fulfills two functions: it expresses the feeling by providing a concrete correlative to the abstract sentiments; it also evokes such sentiments by setting them astir not only in the poetic medium but beyond it in the mind of the reader. Fundamentally speaking, the importance that traditional Chinese poets and critics have attached to these two elements derives from the recognition that poetry is meant to express ones elusive thoughts and feelings through concrete and tangible reality in the physical world.