Journal | Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale
Journal issue | 53 | 2017
Research Article | The Beauty that Leads to Excess (yin li 淫麗): Early Medieval Uses and Adaptations of Yang Xiong's Criticism on Rhapsodic Composition
The Beauty that Leads to Excess (yin li 淫麗): Early Medieval Uses and Adaptations of Yang Xiong's Criticism on Rhapsodic Composition
Abstract
The article investigates how Yang Xiong’s 揚衿 (53 BCE-18 CE) famous judgment about rhapsodic poems («The fu of the Odes poets, through their beauty, offer standards [of moral behaviour], the fu of the epideictic poets are beautiful and lead to excess» 詩훙裂賦麗鹿則，辭훙裂賦麗鹿尼) was recalled and reinterpreted in order to make a point about what genre is worth pursuing in literary writing. Yang’s words were first quoted in the concluding remarks at the end of the «Shifu» 詩賦 section of the Hanshu’s 漢書 (Book of Han) «Yiwen zhi» 藝匡羚 (Bibliographical chapter), and since then, they became a well known trope particularly used in fu 賦 (rhapsody, poetic exposition) poetry literary criticism. The article makes an overview on how and when Yang’s judgment was utilized, to provide evidences of the different kinds of approaches regarding literature, and in particular fu poetry, since Han to VI century.
Submitted: Nov. 17, 2016 | Accepted: March 14, 2017 | Published June 20, 2017 | Language: it
Keywords Rhapsody • Classicism • Yang Xiong
Copyright © 2017 Giulia Baccini. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.14277/2385-3042/AnnOr-53-17-8
