Poetics and Prosody in Early Mediaeval China: A Study and Translation of Kūkai's 空海 Bunkyō Hifuron 文鏡秘&

Bodman's study and translation of the Bunkyō hifuron is a carefully revised edition of his 1978 Ph.D. thesis at Cornell University. Never previously published, this Quirin Press Edition offers the following features:

-Older Wade-Giles transliteration fully updated and revised to Pinyin. - Carefully typeset and proofed for typographical errors and inconsistencies. - Index & bibliography. - Fully revised and updated by the author.

Keywords: Poetics. - Chinese language -- Versification. - Asian philology. - Chinese poetry -- History and criticism.

"Compiled in 819 the Bunkyō hifuron 文鏡秘府論 (Chinese: Wenjing mifu lun) is a unique collection of Chinese writings on poetics and prosody, most of which were lost in China after the Tang dynasty. They owe their preservation to the monk Kūkai 空海 (774-835), founder of the Shingon sect of Buddhism in Japan, who collected some of the earliest discussions of the "four tones and eight faults" of Shen Yue 沈約 (441-513) as well as several important works of literary criticism, chief among which is the Shige 詩格 of theTang poet Wang Changling 王昌齡 (698-757). It is hence an invaluable source for studying the development of Chinese shi 詩 poetry from the Six Dynasties to the mid-Tang.

" The Bunkyō hifuron] was clearly designed to be a systematic and comprehensive introduction to Chinese literature, edited to omit the repetitions and contradictions in the Chinese authorities from which it was compiled. Its six chapter titles form a mandala of the literary universe: The "Heaven" chapter deals with tones and rhymes; "Earth" with models of different styles of writing; "East" and "West" with the problems of composing couplets and avoiding prosodic errors; "South" with literary theory; and "North" with lists of useful phrases and synonyms. Fourteen texts from which the Bunkyō hifuron was compiled have been identified, eleven of which were subsequently lost in China. Kūkai is thus responsible for only a very few sections of the work. His major role was to edit and re-arrange material and to provide suitable headings. While he occasionally inserted a Chinese text intact, he more frequently divided an original work into pieces and scattered them under a number of headings."

Adapted from Richard Bodman's Bunkyō hifuron entry to The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. William H. Nienhauser, (Indiana University Press, 1986)

Bodman's present study and translation of the Bunkyō hifuron is a carefully revised edition of his 1978 Ph.D. thesis at Cornell University. Never previously published except for the University Microfilms edition, Poetics and Prosody in Early Mediaeval China has always been and remains the key work of reference in Tang poetics and literary theory.

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Author: Richard Wainwright Bodman
Publisher: Quirin Press
Published: 08/17/2020
Pages: 464
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.49lbs
Size: 9.02h x 5.98w x 1.03d
ISBN: 9781922169365

About the Author
Bodman, Richard Wainwright: - Richard Bodman received a B.A. in Far Eastern Languages from Harvard College in 1969. His next two years were spent as an English teacher with the United States Peace Corps in Girishk, Helmand Province, Afghanistan. In the fall of 1971, he entered Cornell University as a graduate student in the field of Chinese literature. His Ph.D. thesis, written under the direction of Prof. Tsu-lin Mei, was on the subject of the Bunkyō hifuron 文鏡秘府論. Following graduation in 1978, he taught classical Chinese for one year apiece at the universities of Minnesota and Wisconsin. In the summer of 1980, he made his first trip to the People's Republic of China, as part of a delegation of the Chinese Language Teachers Association. In the fall of 1980, he commenced teaching Chinese Language and Asian Studies at St. Olaf College, in Northfield, Minnesota, where he spent the remainder of his career. He assisted St. Olaf in establishing an exchange relationship with East China Normal University in Shanghai and served on the first board of directors of the ASIANetwork consortium. He retired from St. Olaf in the spring of 2006. He subsequently spent the fall semester of 2007 instructing English composition at East China Normal University, Shanghai. Since retirement, he has taught courses on China, Afghanistan, and science fiction and fantasy literature for the Cannon Valley Elder Collegium in Northfield.

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