The Poetics of Early Chinese Thought: How the Shijing Shaped the Chinese Philosophical Tradition by Michael Hunter

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Poetics of Early Chinese Thought: How the Shijing Shaped the Chinese Philosophical Tradition by Michael Hunter Giusi Tamburello Michael Hunter. The Poetics of Early Chinese Thought: How the Shijing Shaped the Chinese Philosophical Tradition. New York: Columbia UP, 2021. Pp. 240. US$145.00 hardcover, US$35.00 paperback, US$34.99 ebook. At times, by a fortuitous concatenation of circumstances, one happens to chance upon a text and become utterly absorbed by it. This is what happened to me while reading Michael Hunter’s volume The Poetics of Early Chinese Thought: How the Shijing Shaped the Chinese Philosophical Tradition. For someone like me, engaged in research on Modern and Contemporary Chinese poetry, the Shijing 詩經 (Classic of Poetry) represents “the” Chinese collection of poetry, the one from which Chinese poetry springs. Western sinologists and scholars, such as James Legge in the nineteenth century, Marcel Granet, Arthur Waley, Bernard Karlgren, and Ezra Pound in the twentieth century, have long been publishing seminal works about Chinese classical poetry, delving into the complexity of the study of the Shijing. This substantial body of academic work conveys the impression that this collection of poems belongs to another ‘level of knowledge,’ one that stands out from the rest and appears somehow to be ‘out of reach.’ Composed between the eleventh and sixth centuries BC, the three hundred-plus poems collected in the Shijing are written in ancient Chinese, and modern readers may have difficulties interpreting the work today. Furthermore, having become a fundamental part of the training of imperial officials who had to learn the Five Classics (Wu Jing 五經)-including, as Hunter also mentions, the Changes (Yi 易), Documents (Shu 書), Annals (Chunqiu 春 秋), and Ritual (Li 禮) classics (3)-the [End Page 559] Shijing plays a key role in the Chinese literary canon. Thanks to its prominent position in Chinese culture, it enjoys great cultural prestige. On popular websites too, the Shijing (in English, the Wikipedia entry is Classic of Poetry) is included among the “Five Classics,” or is considered one of the “Six Classics” when Music (Yue 乐) is included, or again one of the “Five Classics” (on Baidu 百度, the Chinese website similar to Wikipedia, we find 成为《六经》及《五经》之一). By referring to them, Wikipedia and Baidu also indicate how the “Classics” were the basis for the knowledge of the learned and cultured elite. It is interesting, at this point, to notice that the Shijing is generally recognized as belonging to the Chinese literary canon. Thus, to engage with a critical volume discussing the Shijing means that the potential reader will also be approaching the volume with reverential respect. The very title of Michael Hunter’s volume triggers this same sentiment as we find in it two key elements that introduce the complexity of the work: “poetics” and “philosophical tradition.” Through his analysis, Hunter brings to light the intimate connection that exists between the first Chinese poetic productions, as they are represented in the Shijing, and the development of Chinese philosophical thought. The interdisciplinary approach that Hunter applies to his research enhances the way poetics and philosophy resonate with each other. Indeed, his point of view stems from the observation that the position of the Shijing is in some respects puzzling: even though so many elements from the Shijing can be detected in the works of poets and philosophers who have shaped Chinese civilization, it has become increasingly marginalized. Therefore, we must reread the canonical texts of Chinese philosophical thought in search of traces of the Shijing that can contribute to its contextualization from a more contemporary point of view. The path Hunter follows is indicated by the titles of the five chapters that follow the introduction: “Reading the Shi,” “A Poetry of Return,” “Shi Poetics beyond the Shi,” “The Shi and the Verses of Chu (Chuci 楚辭),” and “The Shi versus the Masters.” Together, they describe the progressive shifting of the analysis from the poetic corpus of the Shijing and its characteristics to its reverberation on the cultural environment. Through this process, the reader is offered the means to follow the development of Hunter’s idea of classical Chinese philosophical thought that has been modelled on literary assumptions rooted in the world vision of ancient Chinese...