Critics and Commentators: The "Book of Poems" as Classic and Literature by Bruce Rusk (review)

What did the word shi 詩 mean over the course of Chinese history? How was the term defined? What prosodic or interpretive rules applied? Bruce Rusk's thoughtful study shows us that the question is a complicated one and that definitions and categorizations of shi were strikingly fluid over time. At the center of the discourse on shi was the canonical Book of Poetry (Shijing 詩 經), and Rusk argues that the evolving principles of exegesis of this classic were intertwined with the shifting discourse on "secular" poetry (for lack of a better term). The larger implications, as Rusk notes, are to see classical studies in the Chinese tradition as "developed not atop but within and against different modes of intellectual activity" (p. 13). To this end, the book examines the processes of interpretation and analysis of poetry and the Book of Poetry from the earliest recorded comments in Warring States texts down to the May Fourth era. The chapters are thematically rather than chronologically arranged. The first examines early rhetoric on poetry and the Book of Poetry. The second, third, and fourth explore the evolving meaning of poetry, the use of the classic as a model, and the evolution of annotations on poetry and the Book of Poetry, respectively. The fifth chapter is centered around the rise of a forged set of commentaries that arose in the Ming, while the last chapter reflects on twentieth-century re-interpretations of the classic. This thematic structure makes good sense, but the chapters challenge the reader as they shift back and forth across the centuries.

In early texts, shi were defined largely in terms of their moral and ritual import and social usefulness. In the Analects, for example, the disciples of Confucius proved themselves worthy of deeper conversation with the master through their grasp of lines of poetry. The authorship of the poems themselves was not emphasized, and notions of prosody and style were confined to terse references to tone and harmony. Theories of rhyme and meter would not emerge until the Period of Division. The Rites of Zhou (Zhouli 周禮) and the Mao Prefaces offered the early interpretive principles of fu (賦) "exposition," bi (比) "likening," and xing (興) "stimulus," by which the poems were analyzed and categorized.

The Han period saw significant shifts in the meaning of shi poems and the Book of Poetry. Proponents of the Songs of Chu (Chuci 楚辭) presented its purported author Qu Yuan 屈原 as having successfully drawn upon the moral features and compositional elements of the Book of Poems to create a work that stood as a worthy successor and a veritable classic itself. This then marked the initial phase of linking the canonical work with later poetic composition. From here, Rusk turns to the late Han, in which writing poetry began to emerge as a gentlemanly avocation. In inscriptions and later in prefaces, the poetic endeavors of writers in the Han, the Period of Division, and the Tang were praised for carrying on the work of the Book of Poems both as a moral enterprise and as a literary treatment. The fu (賦), as an emerging genre of poem, was traced back to the poems of the classic. Attempts were made to construct lost poems of antiquity, for which only titles survived. Thus the Book of Poems was not only a classic to be venerated, but also served as a template and precursor for later poets. By the Period of Division, anthologies like Xiao Tong's 蕭統 Wenxuan 文選 and Wang Tong's 王通 Xushi 續試 had established the composition of shi and fu as post-canonical continuations of the moral and literary enterprise of the Book of Poems. Anthologies raised further interpretative problems: what about other pre-Qin poetry, such as the Stone Drum inscriptions unearthed in the seventh century? What was the connection between these pieces and those of the canon? Could it be that Confucius never saw them?

Rusk deftly explores the reformulation of the exegesis...