Poetics of Biography: 2

Some Calligraphy by the Memoirist Mao Xiang 冒襄

Yang Zhengrun 杨正润. Xiandai zhuanji xue 现代传记学 (A Modern Poetics of Biography). Nanjing, China: Nanjing University Press, May 2009.A very long work that tries to map out both a canon and theoretical issues within "biographical literature" 传记文学 in two compared contexts, Chinese and Western.

I wrote a bit about the introduction in fall of 2009, but I didn't make it back to this volume, even though it sat right on my desk!

A few thoughts on what's going on in this volume:


Yesterday I read through the first section of chapter 8, 亚自传, which I take to mean "Asian Autobiography," although I feel I may have that term wrong. More to come on that. The first section of this chapter is on "memoires" 回忆录, in which Prof. Yang outlines the why readers value memoirs uniquely, distinct from biographies and autobiographies, for the memoir's own freer structure comprised of anecdote. Autobiographies should aim for something with strong unity, but memoirists need not have any such worry, though they do at times craft strongly unified works that blur the line between autobiography and biography.

The whole section is full of rather simple ideas, but they make for good Chinese reading, especially as they introduce an unusual list of memoirs that helps Prof. Yang outline the types. My notes have a fairly complete list, though many of the Russian and other foreign names are obscure to me. I was delighted to see Kruschev contrasted to Zhou Zuoren, the one with an interest in historical record, the other on the self. This self <-> history dichotomy is the most striking tension that unites the section. I wonder if we might call it the key paradox of Chinese thought on biography (we follow Wu Pei-yi in this, of course).

Bibliography of Memoirs Mentioned in Chapter 8, Section 1:

Mao Xiang 冒襄. Ying mei an yi yu 影梅庵忆语 [Shadow-plum hut reminiscences]. Beijing: Foreign Languages Education and Research Press, 2009. One of four named examples of Ming and Qing memoir that present the details of married life, elements of the setting and other details. These and three other Ming memoir are said to have high-falutin language, as compared to the plainer Qing work of Shen Fu.

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Old Recluse List

Recluses on the march. Er, I mean NOT on the march, very much so.

I started cleaning out the expanding divider that I carry around in my backpack, for it has gotten large and unwieldy. I came across some material on recluses that I don't think I had typed up, though I wrote an entryon Tao Qian that seems to have been influenced by these sources.

Li Chi 李. “The Changing Concept of the Recluse in Chinese Literature.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 24 (1962): 234–247.

This is really nice short introduction to the recluse figure as one that changes quite a bit over time; this is illustrated with a series of brief portraits of representative recluses. I especially like Li's opening image of the recluse portrait: "tiny human figures, almost imperceptible among the rocks and pines;" this reminds me of the notes I've taken on a large-format book about Chinese paintings, and the lecture I gave on Chinese portraits.

Berkowitz, Alan. Patterns of Disengagement: The Practice and Portrayal of Reclusion in Early Medieval China. Stanford Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000. I didn't actually get through this, though I made a few notes on the back of the Li Chi's paper, which I printed out in full.

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Book Note: Worlds Apart: Recent Chinese Writing and Its Audiences

Random Image from the Ricci Map: Texas/Mexico

Lee, Gregory. “Review: [Worlds Apart: Recent Chinese Writing and Its Audiences, edited by Howard Goldblatt].” The China Quarterly, no. 124 (December 1990): 744-745. I had no luck finding anything quickly in English about the Gao Yang novel Qing gong wai shi (Secret History of the Qing Imperial Palace), but I hit on a valuable essay volume. I feel like my dissertation should also answer to the issue of what has Chinese literature done well in the past 40 years, and what are its limitations. I feel like my own readings, though less voluminous than more mature scholars, can provide a needed alternate perspective here.

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Post-Christmas Reading

Yang Jiang with a statue of Don Quixote, along with Mayor of Madrid Juan Barranco

Nothing learned on Christmas, except that not all of A's relatives get along so well (ta-tum!).

The day after, we ride with Dave and Felicia to Northeast Harbor. I manage to do a little reading during the drive:

De Almeida, M. W. Barbosa. "On Turner on Levi-Strauss" Current Anthropology, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Feb., 1992), pp. 60-63. A strange place to begin Levi-Strauss, perhaps, but actually this spirited defense of Levi-Strauss' logical consistency certainly intrigues with its conjecture that Levi-Strauss predicts the "entropy" of culture. "The use of entropy arguments can be seen as a reaction to the historical optimism based on a deterministic or evolutionist view of history." In other words, Levi-Strauss was a pessimist who could prove his case. Or at least thought he could.

Sanders, Valerie. "Teaching & Learning Guide for: Victorian Life Writing." Literature Compass 1/1 (2003–4), 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2004.00113.x (weird, huh? Damned if I know what last code means) I dug up this overview for having one example of a syllabus of how to teach life writing. It attempts to be helpful by calling on us to "examine the way in which Victorian life-writers handle the interplay of narrative, memory, and time" but does not quite seem to get to those terms anywher in its hypothetical (and insipid) syllabus. Nevertheless, there were a few titles that looked good, such as E. F. Benson’s Our Family Affairs 1867–1896 (London: Cassell, 1920), which are said to "reveal the domestic unhappiness of the family of Gladstone’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson, whose children and wife were all to some extent homosexual or lesbian." You know I just have to have a look to find out how anyone can be homosexual "to some extent." Note to self: just sit down and read James Olney already, dammit.

Litzinger, Ralph A. "Memory Work: Reconstituting the Ethnic in Post-Mao China Ralph A. Litzinger." Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 13, No. 2. (May, 1998), pp. 224-255.
[Stable URL] This was a meaty article; I'll need to review my notes carefully in the next 24 hours (ahem!) and embed into my dissertation the four points at which Litzinger's readings inform what I want to say about Yang Jiang's life and work. One of these is path by which I will return to speak on the statue of Don Quixote on the campus of Qinghua University. Litzinger gives me the inspiration to write read the statue as a place that illustrates "memory work." (see illustration)




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Fantasy Bibliography

Stuff I can probably write, if I work hard:

"Life Writing in China: State of the Field"


The Penguin Book of Chinese Life Writing (I need to work on the cover of this one)

"The Life Writing in the Guwen guanzhi" (okay, that's more like a footnote than a paper. But hey.)

The History of Chinese



About the Author (this is fake, duh): Jesse Field is the John King Fairbank Professor of History and East Asian Studies at Harvard University. His screenplay God Wars of the Chinese Mind was made into a film by a sexy young Chinese director and won the 2015 Oscar for Best Picture. He's also Master of Lowell House.
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The Great Book Migration

身邊的書籍

I'm going to slowly go through all of the Chinese books I've purchased (not as many as you'd think!) and prepare to get rid of them -- probably in one big sale to Book House, a great store right near my office.



As a first step, I'll move the books a few at a time from my house to my office. Today is the first installment:

Xu Zhen 許慎 (d. 120 CE) and Xiang Shu 向夏, editor. Shuo wen jie zi bu shou jiang shu : Zhongguo wen zi xue dao lun 說文解字部首講疏 : 中國文字學導論 [The Shuowen jiezi, with commentary and annotations arranged by radicals: a guide to Chinese philology]. Taipei: Shulin chuban youxian gongsi, 1999.

Gao Zhengyi 高政一 and Wu Shaozhi 吳紹志, editors and translators. Xin yi gu wen guan zhi 新譯 古文觀止 [The Guwen guanzhi, a new translation]. Tainan: Xin shiji chubanshe, 1985. An old high-school edition with no ISBN and a no entry in the Worldcat. Kind of a nice relic of Taiwan's early post-martial-law period. I paid a dollar for this in a Taipei used bookstore, but it may not even have that much value these days.

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Icon Bibliography

Hill, Michael Gibbs. Lin Shu, Inc. : Translation, Print culture, and the Making of an Icon in Modern China. Dissertation: Columbia University, 2008. Wachter for Biography's Annual Bibliography of Life Writing, 2007-8:

Analysis of how Lin Shu (1852–1924) and his associates in commercial publishing, education, and business exploited the interactions between translation, literary writing, and print culture for profit and to promote their “conservative” cultural agenda.

Berman, Jessica. "Feminizing the Nation: Woman as Cultural Icon in Late James." The Henry James Review 17.1 (1996) 58-76. I've discussed this already; working on it now.



University of Toronto Quarterly, Volume 77, Number 4, Fall 2008. "Rabindranath Tagore as ‘Cultural Icon’" The whole journal is devoted to this one topic, which shows the breadth of angles that one can take on "cultural icon." The definition supplied in the useful introduction by Joseph T. and Kathleen M. O'Connell is as follows: "a symbolic focal point or prism that points toward, sums up, and opens onto a much wider world of meaning."
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Shilian Dashan: A Preliminary Bibliography

Yay for group work

Wu, Pei-yi. The Confucian's Progress : Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China. Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990. Pages 199-203 introduce the late 17th century monk, his memoir of a trip to Vietnam, and the self-portraits he includes in his poetry collection, .

Dashan 大汕, 17th/18th century and Wan Yi 萬毅, Du Aihua 杜靄華 and Qiu Jiang 仇江, eds. Dashan Heshang ji 大汕和尚集. Guangzhou Shi : Zhongshan daxue chubanshe, 2007. This is the edition from which I take the self portraits. It also contains the complete texts of Dashan's poetry collections and the memoir 海外紀實.

Jiang Boqin 姜伯勤. Shilian Dashan yu Aomen Chan shi :Qing chu Lingnan Chan xue shi yan jiu chu bian 石濂大汕与澳门禅史 : 淸初岭南禅学史硏究初编. Shanghai : Xuelin chubanshe, 1999. I haven't examined this volume, but I wonder about Shilian's relationship with trade networks and missionaries -- this book looks like a possible source on that.

Pan Chengyu 潘承玉. Qu Dajun zhi you Shilian: yi wei zhide guanzhu de Qing chu Lingnan Shi seng 屈大均之友石濂：一位值得关注的清初岭南诗僧. Pan Tsung-yi found this on http://zhihai.heshang.net ; the listed origin is 佛学研究网. Another line says 绍兴文理学院，2003年第1期 (Shaoxing Arts and Sciences Institute, Issue 1, 2003). This article reviews the facts of Shilian's downfall: a grand trial in Guangzhou, estrangement from friends like Qu Dajun, his exile and death en route, and having his works banned. Author Pan Chengyu thinks Shilian was probably wrongfully punished by his political enemies.

Volpp, Sophie. "The Literary Circulation of Actors in Seventeenth-Century China." The Journal of Asian Studies, 61.3 (August, 2002): 949-984. Prof. Waltner says this is an example of a study of a portrait album to understand social networks. Although it is about a beautiful young actor, not a Chan master, the common use of media for community-building is fascinating. Haven't examined this yet.

Wheeler, Charles. "Buddhism in the re-ordering of an early modern world: Chinese missions to Cochinchina in the seventeenth century." Journal of Global History (2007), 2:303-324. A great article for thinking about Shilian's place in missionary Buddhism and trade networks; I've already discussed it in another post.

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