Chǔ cí hòu yǔ 楚辭後語
A Continuation of the Chu ci by 朱熹 (撰)
About the work
The Chǔ cí hòu yǔ 楚辭後語 (A Continuation of the Chu ci) by Zhū Xī 朱熹 (1130–1200) is a six-juan anthology of post-Chǔcí poetry in the sāo 騷 mode. Composed as the third member of Zhū Xī’s Chǔcí trilogy alongside the Jí zhù (KR4a0004) and the Biàn zhèng (KR4a0009), it consists of fifty-two pieces from Xúnqīng 荀卿 (Xúnzǐ) down to Lǚ Dàlín 呂大臨 of the Northern Sòng — a selection drawn from Cháo Bǔzhī’s 晁補之 Xù Chǔ cí 續楚辭 (originally 20 juan) and Biàn lí sāo 變離騷 (also 20 juan), severely condensed to six juan with notably strict editorial selection. The catalog meta lists this work with source: krp-titles, meaning it is attested in the bibliographic index but no source files are present in the Kanripo corpus; the work is treated below from the parent Sìkù tíyào (which bundles Jí zhù + Biàn zhèng + Hòu yǔ into a single notice — see KR4a0004).
Tiyao
Combined with KR4a0004 in the Sìkù catalog. The relevant section of the WYG tíyào (乾隆四十六年十月, 1781/10):
[Zhū Xī] also collated and edited Cháo Bǔzhī’s 晁補之 Xù Chǔ cí 續楚辭 and Biàn lí sāo 變離騷, recording fifty-two pieces from Xúnqīng down to Lǚ Dàlín, and made of them the Chǔ cí hòu yǔ, again with his own preface.
The old recensions of the Chǔ cí contained Dōngfāng Shuò’s 東方朔 Qī jiàn, Wáng Bāo’s 王褒 Jiǔ huái, Liú Xiàng’s 劉向 Jiǔ tàn, and Wáng Yì’s 王逸 Jiǔ sī. Cháo’s recension already deleted the Jiǔ sī; this edition further eliminates Qī jiàn, Jiǔ huái, and Jiǔ tàn — three more pieces — adding in their place two fù by Jiǎ Yì 賈誼. Chén Zhènsūn’s Shū lù jiě tí explains that “from Qī jiàn downward, the diction and intent are flat and not deep, like groaning without illness” — that is the reason for the deletions.
Cháo Bǔzhī’s Xù lí sāo originally ran to twenty juǎn and his Biàn Chǔ cí also to twenty; the Hòu yǔ condenses these to six juǎn, with extremely strict selection. Yáng Xióng’s 揚雄 Fǎn sāo 反騷, which was not even taken into the old recension, is on the contrary admitted into the Hòu yǔ; Zhū explains in his own preface that he wished, by means of the Fǎn sāo, to display the dispraise of Sūshì 蘇氏 and Hóngshì 洪氏 — that is, to set forth the great warning before all-under-heaven.
Abstract
The Hòu yǔ is the genealogical wing of Zhū Xī’s Chǔcí trilogy: where the Jí zhù fixes the Chǔ cí canon proper and the Biàn zhèng defends the new arrangement against earlier commentaries, the Hòu yǔ extends the sāo tradition forward into the post-Chǔcí literary record, organizing fifty-two later pieces into a continuous lineage. The selection is severe — Cháo Bǔzhī’s combined forty juan are reduced to six — and editorially polemic: the inclusion of Yáng Xióng’s Fǎn sāo (which Hàn editors had refused to admit even into the loose Cháo collection) is meant to demonstrate by negative example what the loyalist-allegorical reading repudiates.
The fifty-two-piece sequence runs from Xúnqīng (Xúnzǐ, 3rd c. BCE) through Hàn pieces (Jiǎ Yì’s 弔屈原 and 服(鵩)賦, plus Yáng Xióng’s Fǎn sāo), then through WèiJìn, Tang, and Northern Sòng, ending with Lǚ Dàlín 呂大臨 (Chéng-school disciple, 1042–1090) — placing the sāo lineage on a par with the gǔwén genealogy of Hán Yù 韓愈 and the Sòng prose-anthologists.
The work was widely read alongside Zhū’s Jí zhù in the Yuán, Míng, and Korean / Japanese reception of Zhū Xī’s Chǔcí program. It survives in standard print editions and in Sìkù transmission; the absence of source files for KR4a0008 in the local Kanripo file tree reflects the librarian’s decision to give the Hòu yǔ a stand-alone KR id even though the WYG transmits it physically alongside the Jí zhù and Biàn zhèng under one unified Sìkù catalog notice. For users wanting the Wényuángé text, see the parent file at KR4a0004.
Translations and research
- See the references at KR4a0004.
- The standard modern edition combines all three works of the trilogy: Chǔ cí jí zhù, Biàn zhèng, Hòu yǔ, ed. Bái Huà-wén 白化文, Shanghai guji 1953.
Other points of interest
The most theoretically pointed feature of the anthology is its inclusion of Yáng Xióng’s Fǎn sāo — a Hàn-period explicit refutation of Qū Yuán’s suicide. Zhū admits the piece as a foil, his preface notes, “to display the dispraise of Sūshì and Hóngshì and so set forth the great warning under heaven.” Read with the simultaneous deletion of Qī jiàn, Jiǔ huái, Jiǔ tàn, and Jiǔ sī — all marked as too shallow to deserve the sāo name — the Hòu yǔ effectively rewrites the canonical genealogy of sāo poetry to align with Zhū’s Confucian-loyalist reading.