Abstract
The motif of decadence has a long history in Chinese literary and political rhetoric. It is bound up with the idea of restoration, of revival. In the Analects Confucius deploys this by invoking the decline of proper ritual forms and observances as indicative of the overall decay of civil morality and governmental order. The use of an idealized antiquity as a foil for criticizing contemporary society or politics is evident in such later writers as Han Yu (768–824), for whom, as Charles Hartman notes, the distant past was an almost spiritual state, which Han Yu equated with his hopes for the immediate future. His goal in literary and moral cultivation was to return to antiquity (fugu). The interval between ancient times and the present was one of decline. Stephen Owen has also written extensively about the images of ruins or other vestiges of antiquity in Chinese literature as foci for memory and lament, as well as inspirations for renewal.
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