Shī zuǎn xù 詩纘緒
A Continuation-Thread on the Classic of Poetry by 劉玉汝 (Liú Yùrǔ, zì Chéngzhī 成之, fl. 1341–1373)
About the work
An 18-juǎn late-Yuán Zhū-Xī-school sub-commentary on the Shī jí zhuàn, structurally similar to Fǔ Guǎng’s Shī tóngzǐ wèn (KR1c0021) but with significantly greater methodological self-consciousness. The work is principally focused on (1) the bǐxìng 比興 categories (metaphor and stimulus), with a fine-grained taxonomy: yǒu qǔyì zhī xìng 有取義之興 (stimulus that draws meaning), wú qǔyì zhī xìng 無取義之興 (stimulus that draws no meaning), yī jù xìng tōng zhāng 一句興通章 (one line stimulating the whole stanza), shù jù xìng yī jù 數句興一句 (several lines stimulating one line), xìng jiān bǐ 興兼比 (stimulus combined with metaphor), fù jiān bǐ 賦兼比 (description combined with metaphor); (2) the rhyming fǎ 法 (method): gé jù wéi yùn 隔句為韻 (rhyming alternate lines), lián zhāng wéi yùn 連章為韻 (rhyming through linked stanzas), dié jù wéi yùn 叠句為韻 (rhyming repeated lines), chóng yùn wéi yùn 重韻為韻 (rhyming reduplicated rhymes); (3) the difference between Fēng and Yǎ — qiāng diào bù tóng 腔調不同 (different in melody-and-tone) and cí yì bù tóng 詞義不同 (different in word-and-meaning). The whole structure is a careful working-out of Zhū Xī’s bǐxìng and xié yùn doctrines into operationally distinct categories.
The Sìkù editors note that the work was unrecorded in every YuánMíng bibliography and survives only through Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recovery; their reconstruction yields the present 18-juǎn form, with textual corruptions corrected.
Tiyao
By the Yuán Liú Yùrǔ. Yùrǔ’s start-and-end is unclear. Pushing back through Zhōu Tíngzhèn’s Shíchū jí shows him to have been a Lúlíng man, zì Chéngzhī, who once held the xiānggòng jìnshì status. The preface he wrote to the Shíchū jí is dated Hàn Wǔ guǐchǒu (an irregular era-name, but Liú Yùrǔ was thus still alive at the start of the Míng).
This book is unrecorded in every bibliography; only the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn preserves its text. The general intent is exclusively to manifest Master Zhū’s Jí zhuàn; hence “zuǎn xù” (continuing the thread). The format approaches Fǔ Guǎng’s Tóngzǐ wèn. Wherever a single character or two in the Jí zhuàn requires weighing, he must seek the mìng yì (the locus of the intent), or preserve this reading and drop the other, or take this discussion as primary while combining the other — none unsought through to the reason. On the categories of bǐ and xìng, he says there is a stimulus that draws meaning, a stimulus that draws no meaning, a single line stimulating the whole stanza, several lines stimulating one line, stimulus combined with metaphor, description combined with metaphor — and the like. On the methods of rhyming: he says alternate-line rhyme, linked-stanza rhyme, doubled-line rhyme, reduplicated rhyme — and the like. On the difference between Fēng and Yǎ: melody-and-tone difference, word-and-meaning difference — and the like.
On Master Zhū’s bǐxìng and xié yùn readings, all are reflectively examined in detail, threaded and divided. Although they may not all match the Shī poets’ intent, on the Jí zhuàn’s school of learning he can be said to have illuminated.
The various Míng-and-after Shī commentaries rarely cite him — meaning the work has been lost a long time. Now from what the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn preserves we have arranged in canonical order, corrected the corruptions, and fixed at 18 juǎn.
Abstract
The Shī zuǎn xù is the principal late-Yuán methodologically explicit Zhū-Xī-school Shī sub-commentary, surviving only through Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recovery. Its scholarly importance lies in the operational taxonomy it builds for Zhū Xī’s bǐxìng and xié yùn — the most carefully worked-out late-medieval treatment of these categories, and a work that the modern Chinese-literature tradition has retrospectively recognized as anticipating much of Qīng Shī-poetics analysis. The work was lost from circulation in the late Yuán or early Míng (no YuánMíng bibliography records it) and survived only because the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn preserved it; it was unknown to the Míng Shī commentary tradition. Composition is bracketed by the catalog’s fl. 1341 (Liú Yùrǔ’s mature scholarly career) to ca. 1380 (consistent with his Shíchū jí preface having been written into the early Míng).
Translations and research
No translation. The work has been the subject of dedicated study in modern Chinese-literature poetics: Yáng Xīwěn 楊曦文, Liú Yùrǔ Shī zuǎn xù yánjiū (Húběi dà., 2008). Briefly noticed in Bao Lǐlì, Yuándài Shī xué shǐ, where the bǐ-xìng taxonomy is recognized as the most refined of the period.
Other points of interest
The work’s complete disappearance from the YuánMíng bibliographic record — combined with its preservation only in the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn — is one of the more striking cases in the Shī-class tíyào of how the Sìkù Yǒnglè dàdiǎn recovery project rescued substantial scholarly works that even the late-Yuán / early-Míng tradition had already lost track of.