Monday, March 5, 2007.
12:00 PM.
Location: Philippines Conference Room, Encina Hall, 3rd Floor
CEAS China Brown Bag
Meow Hui Goh, CEAS Postdoctoral Fellow
The three fifth century A.D. poets Shen Yue, Wang Rong, and Xie Tiao are known to be the first to propose and promote the concept of poetic prosody and consciously experiment with it in their writings. Their collaboration to reform the language of Chinese poetry reached its height toward the end of the Yongming reign period, during which they invented many new ways to use the tones, initials, and finals of Chinese syllables. Their exploration in prosody, which marked the first step in the formation of "Regulated Poetry" was not only a "technical" exercise as portrayed in many studies; behind the various kinds of prosodic patterns in their poems was an attempt to represent the world by weaving together sound and sense in a poetic text. In their hands, Chinese poetry gained the ability to represent the world in even more sophisticated and abstract ways. This talk will lead us in reading their "Poems on Things." through which the sound and the world within will be revealed.