Chinese Culture Colloquium | The Shaping of the Tetrasyllabic Poems in Mid-Western Zhou: A Cross Examinations of the Formulaic Expressions from Bronze Inscriptions and the Odes of "Zhousong"

October 15, 2021 Upcoming

Topic:?The Shaping of the Tetrasyllabic Poems in Mid-Western Zhou: A Cross Examinations of the Formulaic Expressions from Bronze Inscriptions and the Odes of "Zhousong"

Speaker:?Professor Chen Zhi

Date:?Friday, October 15, 2021

Time:?16:00-17:30

Venue:?Governing Board Meeting Room, Dao Yuan Building

Language:?Chinese/English

Speaker Profile:

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Prof. Chen Zhi holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from Peking University and an M. Phil in Chinese Literature from Nanjing University. He also has a PhD degree in Chinese studies from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, USA. Prof. Chen started his teaching at National University of Singapore, Middlebury College and the UW-Madison. He joined HKBU in 2000, and served as Acting Dean of Arts in 2015. He is currently appointed Chair Professor in Chinese Literature and Director of the Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology. In 2018, Prof. Chen was appointed Vice President of Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College and now is the Provost of the College.

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Prof. Chen’s research interests lie in the areas of Chinese classics, bronze inscriptions, and ancient history of China. His publications include The Legacy of the Odes, Documents, Ritual Music; The Shaping of the Book of Songs: From Ritualization to Secularization, Papers on Interdisciplinary Study of the Book of Odes. He also has had dozens of papers in Chinese and English published in?Hong?Kong?SAR, Taiwan and Mainland China, Europe and USA.?Prof. Chen is the editor of the Early China Book Series, founding Chief Editor of the Bulletin of the Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology, and the founding Associate Editor of Journal of Early Chinese Philosophers., founding Editor of Jao Tsung-I Library of Sinology, Innovative Teaching and Learning, Old World: Journal of Ancient Africa and Euro-Asia, book series of Ancient Languages and Civilizations.?

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Over the past decade, Prof. Chen published extensively in different areas, especially in early Chinese history, Chinese classics and paleography, and intellectual history of Ming and Qing dynasties.

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Abstract:

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Professor Chen Zhi examines formulaic expressions and set phrases that appear both in the received version of the Shijing (Book of Songs), China’s earliest anthology of poetry, and excavated Western Zhou bronze inscriptions (1045-771 BC). By looking across these two different corpuses of texts, transmitted and unearthed, Chen shall demonstrate how the shaping of a specific poetic form in the bronze inscriptions, i.e. tetrasyllabic meter and rhyme structure, can be dated to mid-Western Zhou—primarily to the reigns of kings Gong (ca. 917-900 BC) and Yi (ca. 899-873 BC), and implies that the early rhyme poems in the Shijing’s “Ya” 雅 and “Song” 颂 sections can be dated no earlier than this. Chen argues that the early development in form and style of these two genres of texts grew out of songs recited by worshippers in sacrificial and ceremonial activities. This study sheds new light on the origin of the tetrasyllabic poem and traces its roots back to elite court music related to ritual activities. Chen ultimately disagrees with the commonly held opinion that the tetrasyllabic poems, the earliest poetic genre in Chinese literary history, were improvised folk songs.