Abstract
According to Harold Bloom, “Few notions are more difficult to dispel than the ‘common-sensical’ one that a poetic text is self-contained, that it has an ascertainable meaning or meanings without reference to other poetic texts.”1 Rather than re-engaging in the failed enterprise of seeking to interpret any single poem as an “entity in itself,”2 Bloom revisions the poetic text as an “intertextual construct, comprehensible only in terms of other texts which it prolongs, completes, transforms, and sublimates.”3 Extrapolating from the general notion of “intertextuality,” or the idea that every text is from the outset under the jurisdiction of other discourses that impose a universe of meaning on it, Bloom proffers the following theory of poetic influence:
Poetic influence—when it involves two strong, authentic poets,—always proceeds by a misreading of the prior poet, an act of creative correction that is actually and necessarily a misinterpretation… what divides each poet from his Poetic Father (and so saves, by division) is an instance of creative revisionism.4
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Notes
Harold Bloom, Poetry and Repression (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 2–3.
Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 43.
Jonathan Culler, The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), 108.
On the changing meaning of “bai jia” during the Warring States Period, see Jens Østergard Peterson, “Which Books Did the First Emperor of Ch’in Burn? On the Meaning of Pai Chia in Early Chinese Sources,” Monumenta Serica 43 (1995), 1–52.
On the classification and dating of the Syncretist phase of early Daoism, see Liu Xiaogan, Classifying the Zhuangzi Chapters (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 129–171;
A. C. Graham, “How Much of Chuang Tzu Did Chuang Tzu Write,” in his Studies in Chinese Philosophy and Philosophical Literature (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1991), 283–321;
and Harold D. Roth, “Who Compiled the Chuang Tzu,” in Chinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts, ed. by Henry Rosemont, Jr. (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 2000), 79–128. Graham and Liu classify chapters 12–14, the end of 15 and 33 as Syncretist (or Huang-Lao in Liu’s terminology).
See for example, Herlee G. Creel, “On Two Aspects of Early Taoism,” in What Is Taoism? and Other Studies in Chinese Cultural History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970), esp. 44–45.
Isabelle Robinet, Taoism: The Growth of a Religion, trans. by Phyllis Brooks (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 47. Although Robinet is here referring to the sage of the Huainanzi, I think the characterization can be extended to the sage of the “Syncretist Chapters.” On the background of the sage figure in ancient Chinese thought,
see Julia Ching, “Who Were the Ancient Sages,” in Sages and Filial Sons: Mythology and Archeology in Ancient China, ed. by Julia Ching and Richard Guisso (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1991), 1–22.
Stephen W. Durrant, The Cloudy Mirror: Tension and Conflict in the Writings of Sima Qian (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), xv.
K. C. Hsiao, A History of Chinese Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 28.
A. C. Graham, trans., Chuang-tzu: The Inner Chapters (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001), 45.
Harold Roth, “Bimodal Mystical Experience in the ‘Qiwulun’ Chapter of the Zhuangzi,” Journal of Chinese Religions 28 (2000), 31–32.
See also Harold Roth, “Redaction Criticism and the Early History of Taoism,” Early China 19 (1994), 1–46.
John S. Major, Sarah A. Queen, Andrew Seth Meyer, and Harold D. Roth, trans. and eds., The Huainanzi: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 304.
David N. Keightley, “The Religious Commitment: Shang Theology and the Genesis of Chinese Political Culture,” History of Religions 17.3/4 (February–May 1978), 212–213.
See also K. C. Chang, Shang Civilization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), esp. 31–35; and “Shang Shamans,” in The Power of Culture: Studies in Chinese Cultural History, ed. by Willard J. Peterson, Andrew H. Plaks, and Ying-shih Yu (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1994), 10–36.
Anna Seidel, “Taoism: The Unofficial High Religion of China,” Taoist Resources 7.2 (1997), 49.
Henri Maspero, China in Antiquity, trans. by Frank A. Kierman, Jr. (Amherst: UMASS Press, 1978), 86–87.
Toshihiko Izutsu, A Comparative Study of the Key Philosophical Concepts in Sufism and Taoism (Tokyo: Kokusai, 1967), 16.
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© 2014 Jung H. Lee
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Lee, J.H. (2014). Inwardly a Sage, Outwardly a King: The Way as Ruler. In: The Ethical Foundations of Early Daoism. Palgrave Macmillan’s Content and Context in Theological Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137384867_7
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