EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Premodern Literature 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 42 were combined into one cycle. During this period the form of poems transformed from four-syllabic into five-syllabic. Main themes: lyrical poetry, chanting of ancient times, travel poems, grief for the dead wife, drinking poems, chanting of immortals and life among the gardens and fields, etc. The cause of cyclical works was the tradition of imitation of masterpieces of the past, the ability to bring together diverse components (reasoning, description, dedication), the widespread making of poem collections, etc. Schwermann Christian (University of Bonn) “The Kinds of Love Are Seven in Number”: Semantic Range and Philosophical Significance of ài 愛 in Early Chinese Manuscripts Key words: affection, asymmetric relationships, ài 愛 (to love, cherish, care for, spare, be stingy with), Chǔ manuscripts, phonetic series The historical semantics of the exoactive verb ài, OC *qˁəp-s, “to love, cherish, care for, spare, be stingy with”, has remained a controversial issue. Whereas Gassmann (2011) held that it refers to an emotion that unduly favours somebody or something and that it is doubtful whether it was ever used in the sense of “to be stingy”, the present author argued (Schwermann 2011, 2013) that the common semantic denominator of the phonetic series of ài is “to draw towards oneself”, that “to be stingy with” is the root meaning of ài and that “to love” is a derivative meaning referring to an affection towards persons or objects that an agent does not want to share with others. It is in accord with these findings that ài often refers to an affectionate action in asymmetric relationships and that persons to whom this affection is extended are frequently dependents of the agent. In this paper, I would like to explore the scope of ài in excavated manuscripts of the Warring States period in order to review the above hypotheses, which were derived solely from received texts, and to shed further light on the concept of love in early China. I will focus on the Chǔ 楚 manuscripts from Guōdiàn 郭店 , which apparently cover the full semantic range of ài and indicate that the term was part and parcel of the philosophy of human nature in the late fourth century B.C.E. This is, for instance, attested in the manuscript Xìng zì mìng chū 性自命出 (Human Nature Derives from Mandate): “The kinds of love are seven in number. Only those people who love by nature count as coming close to human-heartedness.” ( 愛 類 七，唯性愛為近仁。 ) This stands in striking contrast to Mèng zǐ 7A45, which keeps the fields of application of ài and rén strictly separate in its critique of the Mohist idea of “omnilateral love/care/sparing” (jiān ài 兼愛 ), and is therefore indicative of the extent to which the manuscripts diverge from the received tradition and how they furnish new evidence on the history of early Chinese concepts. Schwermann Christian (University of Bonn) From Chu with Love. Concepts and Tales of Attachment and Infatuation in Early Chinese Manuscripts Key words: affection, emotions, historical semantics, love, manuscripts Previous work on the historical semantics of affection concepts in early Chinese texts suggests that the history of emotions in Early China was more complex than conventionally assumed in the literature. Taking advantage of both the genius loci of the Petropolitan manuscript studies tradition and the unprecedented surge of archaeologically excavated texts in China during recent decades, the panel proposes to focus on reflexes of semantic changes in the word field of love in Warring States and early imperial manuscripts and on the question of how such concepts were put into narrative action in these documents. Since manuscripts, while not necessarily primary texts in every case, tend to be less contaminated by layers of later redactions and more reliably datable than received texts, they are particularly well-suited for the study of the history of semantic change. Some of them even contain delightful tales of personal attachment and infatuation that reflect how early Chinese notions of love were enacted in narrative, argumentative, and legal prose. Any comprehensive history of concepts, in particular the history of love in early China, will profit from an investigation of how affection and fondness were brought to life by contemporary writers. Beyond the