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The Study of Qing Dynasty Scholarship on “Revenge”
in the Three Commentaries of the Chunqiu
Among the three Commentaries of the Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals), the Gongyang zhuan espouses the most extreme view on the idea of revenge. The Gongyang zhuan’s attitude toward revenge is most salient in the fourth year of Duke Zhuang, when “The Marquis of Ji made a great departure from his state,” an incident that involves the issue of responsibility that falls upon descendant sons and ministers to exact revenge on behalf of a past ruler even after nine/a hundred generations after his murder.
This essay first discusses early Qing scholars’ opposition to “the revenge of nine generations,” then late Qing scholars’ support of the idea. The rationales of the latter, as the essay points out, were not unassailable. None of the supporters was able to formulate an adequate response to the argument that the enactment of inter-state revenge violates the idea of “absolute reverence for the king.”
The challenge, and even the destruction, that the practice of “revenge” would bring to the legal framework of the state, as well as the resolution to this conflict has always been a matter of tension between ritualism and legalism. Therefore, had the Chunqiu truly glorified “revenge,” it would surely have conflicted with the idea of “absolute reverence for the king.” The present study argues that Chunqiu does not endorse this practice, and that it is the Gongyang tradition that has developed its own line of thinking to validate the practice.
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Lee, Long-shien |
2
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An Exposition on the “Nature of the People” in The Poetics of Confucius
This paper discusses the “nature of the people” in The Poetics of Confucius, which is in Shanghai Museum's Chu Bamboo Books from the Warring States Period. Specifically, it looks at this idea as expressed in four short poems in the work: “Getan,” “Gantang,” “Mugua,” and “Didu.” This concept exerts influence both in spirit and in reality, particularly as concerns the subjective ground of the establishment of “values,” as well as the objective relationship between the “use of things” and the feelings of the heart. In brief, “the nature of the people” that is discussed in The Poetics of Confucius is essentially the same as “the human nature,” thus supplementing the Confucian view of the heart and nature of man and enriching the latter from the viewpoint of the history of thought. The Poetics of Confucius not only upholds ideal and practice of man as based on the “nature of the people,” viewing this nature as something unchangeably certain, but also confirms the standpoint that the “nature of the people” is the foundation of human morals, being the alpha and omega of the rites 禮 of man.
On the one hand, The Poetics of Confucius with respect of the nature of man has the same basic belief as the theory of the goodness of human nature, but on the other hand, in discussing the goodness of man, The Poetics of Confucius is unique: it does not view as primary the human phenomena that is usually analyzed in the theories of human nature, and similarly does not see the direct responses and feelings between man and his objects as expressions of human nature. On the contrary, it exposes the goodness of human nature from its natural disposition to act in relationships with objects, and even in its unkind affairs that are generally accepted as selfish or as human frailties.
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Chien, Liang-ju |
3
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On the Reversal of the Urbane and the Uncultured and on Cultural Renewal in Zhuangzi: With Emphasis on
Flow Body and Flow Language
Through the lenses of “body” and “language”, this paper interprets the reversal strategy of Zhuangzi. It traces the progressive change of the body, from the flow body of ritual in the Shang dynasty, to the abnormal body of Shanhai Jing, to the body of Qi in Zhuangzi; this paper then compares them with the awe-inspiring body in the rites system of the Zhou Dynasty and the Confucian body of Confucius. This study particularly focuses on the ugly and abnormal characters and the common people in Zhuangzi to find how this book tried to reverse the ideology of political and cultural elite by the charm and energy of grassroots characters. Zhuangzi demonstrates a literary technique in which others are rewritten and the rigid value system is renewed by flow language. This approach can develop into a cultural criticism and cultural renewal. In order to explore the cultural renewal theory of Zhuangzi, this paper attempts to interpret it by the context of “Rave Culture” theory of M. M. Bakhtin. In addition it proffers micro-interpretations on reversal strategies (such as taunts), and develops macro-interpretations on the view of cultural renewal, in order to outline new classical interpretation regarding the cultural position of Zhuangzi. |
Lai, Hsi-san |
4
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A New Inquiry into Wang Wei's
“Wangchuan Painting,” the Collected Poems on Wangchuan, and Wangchuan Villa in Perspective of On-Site Research
Legend from Song dynasty or even earlier has it that the draft of "Wangchuan tu" was drawn by Wang Wei; the legend also states that Wangchuan Villa was converted into the Qingyuan Temple, which later was renamed as the Luyuan Temple. Because of this, “Wangchuan tu” has long been viewed as a way to inquire after Wang Wei’s Wangchuan Villa and a guide of the twenty remains in the Collected Poems of Wangchuan.
This paper aims to reveal the relation between "Wangchuan tu" and the Collected Poems of Wangchuan, as well as try to explain how the beliefs regarding “Wangchuan tu” and the idea that “Wangchuan Villa is in the Wang valley” formed and the mistakes associated with it, as seen through various developments from the Tang dynasty through the Qing.
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Chien, Chin-sung |
5
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The Face of the Inbetweener:
The Image of Indigenous History Researcher as Reflected
in Seediq Bale
Are historical theories developed in the European context a suitable device for understanding the intricacy of Taiwan's past and present? Is it possible, in facing up to and dealing with the past of Taiwan, to conceptually apprehend “history” that is often blurred by issues articulated in moral and ethic language? By discussing remarks made by anthropologists Lin Kai-shih and Chiu Yun-fang on the dramatic feature Seediq Bale, I try to depict the image of the culturally and academically challenged indigenous history researchers, or “inbetweeners,” as can be glimpsed in Seediq Bale when viewed as alternatively defined “history.” |
Nakao Eki Pacidal |
6
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Conceptions of Childhood Diseases in Medical Literature during the Sui and Tang Dynasties (581-907)
This paper aims to explore conceptions of childhood disease etiology during the Sui and Tang dynasties (581-907), and to examine important aspects of medical understanding regarding childhood diseases, children’ bodies and their health.
Medieval medical experts attributed pediatric disease not only to expected and unexpected climatic change, being frightened, as well as to accident, supernatural forces, worms, and diet, but also to factors such as a careless mothers during and after pregnancy, congenital factors, contagion, improper nursing and imbalanced body conditions. According to those experts, the diet, temper, health, behavior and moral character of the mother or wet nurse also influenced the child. Therefore, from the medical point of view, the mother was not only responsible for raising and caring for physically healthy offspring, but also for bearing and teaching good sons with high moral standards and social achievement.
Pediatric experts put extra emphasis on the idea that many childhood diseases also resulted from their own frail and feeble bodies. They further used this idea to form basic conceptions of the child body, and applied it to diagnoses and treatments. These signified the professionalization and independence of pediatrics. At the time when male medical experts sought the origins of childhood diseases, they crossed the sex barrier to instruct females on the right ways of nursing children. In so doing, they extend the domain of pediatrics, empowered themselves with professional knowledge, and strengthened their authority over pediatrics and child caring. These are keys to the development of pediatrics in medieval China, and to the independence of pediatrics in the Northern Song dynasty.
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Chang, Chia-feng |
7
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The ‘Body’s Body’: Erasmus’ and Humanists’ Ideas on Clothing
This article attempts to bring the Renaissance humanists and their ideas into the study of clothing culture by looking at the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536), a tremendously influential writer and best-selling author of the sixteenth century. His various works contained valuable sources about his experience and ideas on clothing, as well as the contemporary custom of dress. In addition, he left several portraits to show his style of dress visually. This article thus makes use of his writings and portraits to understand the way that he and other humanists thought of the sign and significance of clothing.
The article begins with the story of Erasmus’s crisis of changing habit in the early sixteenth century, in order to correlate his own experience and his writings on clothing. Then it surveys diverse sources written by Erasmus and his contemporary humanists, including courtesy books, treatises on education, satires, and colloquies. Focusing on Erasmus’s works, this article discovers two ways of seeing things in his ruminations on clothing. On the one hand, ‘seeing is believing’: he is convinced that clothing is ‘the body’s body’ and one may infer the state of a man’s character through what he wears. On the other hand, ‘seeing is not believing’: he suggests not judge a person by his clothes and appearance. Finally, this article turns to look at Erasmus’s portraits and discusses his ideal style of dress. His portraits deliver an image of true ‘civility’, embodying a perfect correspondence between the outward clothing and body and the inner soul and spirit.
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Lin, May-shine |
8
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“Why did she love her mother’s so?”: L.E.L. Forging Corinne
The early decades of the nineteenth century witnessed a renewed interest in the folklore of the mermaid. This period of intensified nation-building and pursuit of individual spirit gradually shifted the political concerns of the medieval romance, such as in the French legend of Melusine, to the struggle of Romantic author, such as in Corinne, or Italy (1807) by Germaine de Stael. Corinne, an improvisatrice of hybrid origin becomes a model for women writers in the nineteenth century. Their responses can be summed up in the polarized paradigm of the poetess represented by Felicia Dorothea Hemans, “the pious mother,” and Letitia Elizabeth Landon, the pretty verse maker.
Landon’s self-definition as a poetess against the model of Corinne develops in three phases in which she adjusts her alignment with her foremothers and finally finds a way out of the impasse bequeathed by them, namely the overwhelming emphasis on the body. First, in “The Improvisatrice,” Landon exploits Corinne’s performative art to exude the visual confines demanded by the popular periodicals and gift annuals. Second, in “The Fairy of the Fountains,” she adapts the matrilineal legend of Melusine by crafting the word rather than the body of the Fairy into the crux of transgression. Third, in “Corinne at the Cape of Misena,” Landon uses her translation of Corinne’s last song to reinstate her virtuosity. This paper seeks to delineate the ways in which Landon forges her own authority as a new Corinne by capitalizing on the “mingled dower” of Melusine.
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Wu, Ya-feng |
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