EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Section 3 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 41 ties? Do they abandon all forms of wrongdoing to fully embody the authority? Both stories end by showing how equivocal these characters remain, having one foot in adulthood and the other one still in an endless childhood characterized by transgressive leanings. Luhn Clara (LMU Munich) How toWord a Letter in Song Dynasty: Sources and Influence of the Encyclopedia Shuxu zhinan Key words: encyclopedia, big data, Song dynasty, letters, epistolary literature The question of how to express yourself adequately in writing is a common concern for scholars, be it in composing a thesis, a paper, or the odd email. What is the case nowadays applied just as much to pre-modern Chinese authors: The otherwise rather unknown Song scholar Ren Guang 任光 (fl. early 12th century) recognized the very problem and thus compiled the encyclopedia Shuxu zhinan 書敘指南 (“Compass for the Writing of Letters” ca. 1126). The Shuxu zhinan, to date only scarcely covered in sinological research, is one of the few preserved encyclopedias from the Song dynasty concerning epistolary writing. Organized in twenty juan with a total of two-hundred sections covering a variety of topics, it lists allusions to earlier texts. It's subject areas range from the emperor, his family, and the court (juan 1) down to disease, death, and burial (juan 20). For every entry the work also adds the main source of the expression. My paper will discuss two aspects of this encyclopedia. With a digital approach borrowing from big data analysis, it will first focus on the sources referred to in the encyclopedia. In exploring which pre-Song works the author considered relevant for his readers to use, it will particularly point out the role of previous letters as source material. The second part of the paper will scan letters of important writers of the Southern Song dynasty, namely Zhu Xi 朱熹 , Wen Tianxiang 文天祥 , Sun Di 孫覿 , Chen Liang 陈亮 , and Fang Yue 方岳 , for the allusions mentioned in the Shuxu zhinan. This will indicate to what extent the reference work served as a guide to letter writing in its time. Mitkina Evgenia (Saint Petersburg State University) Poetic Cycles in Pre-Tang Age Key words: Chinese literature, lyric cycle, Chinese poetry, pre-Tang poetry, Ancient China poetry Lyrical cycles of poems zushi ( 組詩 ) became the subject of study a hundred years ago and continued to be studied until the present time. The characteristics of the lyrical cycles: 1. Author devises the composition. 2. All poems are independent. 3. Composition is centripetal. 4. Poems are connected in lyrical way. 5. The lyric principle of depiction. Cycles of poems appeared in China in Pre-Qin time, but there are a fewworks devoted to them. Researches in nowadays also don`t pay attention to them. Some poems of “Shijing” can be considered as the prototype of poetic cycles. But the real poetic cycles in Ancient China were “Nine songs” ( 九歌 ) and “Nine pieces” ( 九章 ), although they were still at the stage of formation. At that time the form of cycle has not yet been standardized, the size of the poems, the number of characters — all this was different. Since Pre-Qin time and duringWestern and Eastern Han, only a small amount (about 20) of poetic cycles was created. During the reign of the Wei, Jin and Northern and Southern dynasties more than 500 poetic cycles were created, they included more than 3000 poems. New form of collective cyclic poems like “Lianju” ( 聯句 , “connected” lines), another name — “Boliangti” ( 柏梁體 , style Boliang) appeared at that time. Participants of the group wrote one, two or more rows on a given topic. Lines were parallel, had a common rhyme and