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Chinese Studies, Stockholm University
ABSTRACT
I approach the closely interrelated topics of classical Chinese poetics and
theories of language from a somewhat unconventional perspective, namely the
relationship between some early texts dealing with aural and optical illusions
and the reading of poetic imagery in the Confucian scholar Mao Heng's exegesis
of the Book of Poems (Shijing, China's oldest collection of
poetry). Polemically, I suggest that the poetics of the second century
B.C. and its interest in metaphoricity originated in a
philosophizing on the phenomenon of illusion, that is, the deceptive
resemblance (si 
) between disparate objects, the discrepancy
between appearance and actuality. Illusion, thus defined, may appear
as confusing or uncanny in everyday experience (the doppelgänger, the
mirage, the philanderer posing as saint, or linguistic ambiguity); yet this
clash between form and content is an essential aspect of Confucian ritualism
(li 
), observable in rules of mourning, or in the use of
metaphorical poetry as ritualized discourse.
This article has been cited by other articles:
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  M. D. Gu Is Mimetic Theory in Literature and Art Universal? Poetics Today, September 1, 2005; 26(3): 459 - 498. [Abstract] [PDF]
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