Abstract
The chapter by Cai Zongqi is a critique of François Cheng’s 程抱一 misrepresentation of Chinese poetic art, one that is grounded in the “ideographic myth” as advocated by Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound in their influential work The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry. By providing ample evidence from Chinese poetry and poetics, Cai shows that, contrary to Cheng’s claims, the ideographic structure of Chinese characters is of little consequence, if not totally irrelevant, to the evolution of Chinese poetic art. This critique is a prelude to Cai’s own theory that the monosyllabic sounds of Chinese characters, and not their ideographic structures, have shaped the unique rhythms, syntax, and structures of Chinese poetry.
For highlights of Cai’s theory on the relationship between the Chinese language and Chinese poetic art, see Zong-qi Cai, “Sound over Ideograph: The Basis of Chinese Poetic Art.” In Sound and Sense of Chinese Poetry, ed. Zong-qi Cai, Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture 2.2 (2015): 251–257.
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- 1.
Andrew Welsh calls this essay “one of the high points of modern poetics” (Roots of Lyric: Primitive Poetry and Modern Poetics. Princeton : Princeton Univ. Press, 1978, pp. 101) and devotes a long chapter of his book to Fenollosa–Pound’s theory of the ideograph. Welsh’s remark seems to sum up all the laudatory comments on the essay in Western literary circles.
- 2.
Peter A. Boodberg, “The Semasiology of Some Primary Confucian Concepts,” Philosophy East and West 2.4 (1953), pp. 317–332.
- 3.
See Ch’en Shih-hsiang , “The Shih Ching: Its Generic Significance in Chinese Literary Theory and Poetics,” Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology (Academia Sinica) 39, no. 1 (1968), pp. 371–413; reprinted in Studies in Chinese Literary Genres, edited by Cyril Birch. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974, pp. 8–41.
- 4.
Ernest Fenollosa, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, ed. Ezra Pound. San Francisco: City Lights, 1983, p. 8. (Reprint; originally published in 1936).
- 5.
Fenollosa and Pound, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, p. 9.
- 6.
D. D. Paige, ed., The Letters of Ezra Pound 1907–1941. New York: Haskell, 1974, p. 131.
- 7.
Fenollosa and Pound , The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, p. 7.
- 8.
Fenollosa and Pound , The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, p. 17.
- 9.
Fenollosa and Pound , The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, p. 17.
- 10.
Fenollosa and Pound , The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, pp. 8–9.
- 11.
The Art of Chinese Poetry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962, pp. 3–7.
- 12.
See François Cheng , Chinese Poetic Writing, translated from French by Donald A. Riggs and Jerome P. Seaton. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1982. For the Chinese translation of this book, see Baoyi 程抱一, Studies on Chinese Poetry, Painting, and Language 中国诗画语言研究, trans. by Tu Weiqu 涂卫群. Nanjing: Jiangshu renmin chubanshe, 2006.
- 13.
François Cheng , Chinese Poetic Writing, p. 7.
- 14.
François Cheng , Chinese Poetic Writing, p. 9–11.
- 15.
François Cheng , Chinese Poetic Writing, pp. 9–10.
- 16.
Fenollosa and Pound , The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry, p. 9.
- 17.
François Cheng , Chinese Poetic Writing, pp. 9–10.
- 18.
萧统:《文选》Xiao Tong (compiler), Wenxuan (Selections of Refined Literature), commentary by Li Shan 李善. (Reprint:) Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1977, pp. 184–185; David Knechtges, trans., Wen xuan, or, Selections of Refined Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987, pp. 325–329.
- 19.
詹锳:《文心雕龙义证》Zhan Ying, Wenxin diaolong yizheng (Investigations of the Meanings of Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons). Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1989, pp. 1461–1463.
- 20.
Zhan Ying, Wenxin diaolong yizheng, p. 1465.
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Cai Zongqi (2018). Ideographic Myth and Misconceptions about Chinese Poetic Art. In: Fang, W. (eds) Tensions in World Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0635-8_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0635-8_12
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