Recent Taiwanese Scholarship on Song Dynasty Poetry and Prose
- Recent Taiwanese Scholarship on Song Dynasty Poetry and Prose
This article will provide a general introduction to recent Taiwanese research on Song-dynasty poetry and prose. The studies presented here include monographs published within the last ten years as well as research articles published in top-tier Taiwan Humanities Citation Index (THCI) journals between 2007 and 2018.1 In order to help the reader understand the development and direction of larger scholarly trends on the island, we have also decided to introduce several important works of earlier provenance as well as a handful of influential studies that fall outside the above parameters. Finally, the authors discussed in this survey are limited to those that hold, or have previously held, full time academic positions at Taiwanese universities or research institutes; scholars holding part-time appointments or who are employed overseas have not been included.
Part One: Research on Song Prose
Foundational Studies on Song Prose
In China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea as well as the West, Song prose has consistently been a relatively quiet area of literary research. For the most part, the earliest Taiwanese studies of Song prose unfolded under the larger rubric of Tang-Song guwen 古文, or Ancient-style Prose, with Han Yu 韓愈 (768–824), Ouyang [End Page 455] Xiu 歐陽修 (1007–1072), and Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037–1101) serving as the principal subjects of this research. Ch'ien Mu's 錢穆 (1895–1990) "Zalun Tangdai guwen yundong" 雜論唐代古文運動 and "Du Yao Xuan Tang wencui" 讀姚鉉 《唐文粹》 are the two most important studies from the formative period of Taiwanese scholarship on guwen.2 They advance several insightful propositions that even today are thought-provoking, such as Ch'ien's claims that the Tang guwen movement actually began as an Ancient-style verse movement; that Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元 (773–819), in their advocation of guwen, used short essays as a substitute for full-length texts on the classics, philosophy and history; that guwen actually involved the revival of the ancient tradition of philosophical writing; that whenever Han Yu employed poetry as prose (yun shi wei wen 運詩為文), he integrated the two great Chinese literary traditions of metaphor and narrative; and that guwen stylists manifested the temperament and bearing typical of poems and rhapsodies in their short essays.
Ch'ien Mu believed that the unique characteristics of Tang guwen provided the foundation for the development of Song prose. On the basis of the prose pieces included in the literary collections of Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan, as well as those contained in the Tang wencui 唐文粹, Ch'ien discussed the origins of, and developments in, the Tang-Song guwen style as well as the changes that occurred in prose genres over this period. His explanations not only contain important literary insights on aesthetic value and the significance of form, they are also pertinent to the study of intellectual history. In particular, they elucidate the content of the Way (dao 道) and how guwen intellectuals imparted the spirit of "conveying the dao" (zaidao 載道) through their prose. Ch'ien's studies not only broadened the perspective used to study Tang-Song prose, but they also serve as a reminder of the important role played by prose compositions in Song thought. The majority of Taiwanese scholars who have done research on Tang and Song guwen have received inspiration from, or engaged in dialogue with, Ch'ien's views. His influence on the field has been profound and far-reaching.
In 1963, Chin Chung-shu 金中樞 continued Ch'ien's legacy in "Songdai guwen yundong zhi fazhan yanjiu" 宋代古文運動之發展研究,3 which attempted to provide a clear account of the history of guwen's development [End Page 456] in the period preceding Ouyang Xiu's examination related stylistic reforms. In the conclusion to the article, Chin succinctly discussed the thought of the Northern and Southern Song, focusing on the relationship between guwen and the "Learning of the Way" (Daoxue 道學). From our current perspective, Chin's article is perhaps overly concise; however, it draws a general sketch of guwen up until the mid-Northern Song and includes over two hundred footnotes, a rarity among research articles of the time. The article moreover...
