詩話總龜

Shīhuà zǒngguī 詩話總龜

The Great Tortoise-Shell Compendium of Remarks on Poetry by 阮閱 (撰)

About the work

The Shīhuà zǒngguī 詩話總龜, in 98 juǎn (a 48-juǎn qián jí 前集 plus a 50-juǎn hòu jí 後集), is the great early Southern-Sòng compendium of shīhuà 詩話 — the first systematic anthology of the entire Northern-Sòng shīhuà corpus. Compiled by Ruǎn Yuè 阮閱 (zì Hóngxiū 閎休, of Shūchéng 舒城), prefect of Chēnzhōu 郴州 in the Xuānhé era (1119–1125), the work was first issued as the Shīzǒng 詩總 in Xuānhé guǐmǎo 1123 and renamed Zǒngguī in later transmission. It draws on roughly two hundred earlier sources between the two halves (the qián jí citing about 100, the hòu jí about 100 more) and arranges the excerpts under thematic categories — 45 mén 門 in the qián jí and 61 in the hòu jí. The “tortoise-shell” (guī) of the title is an oracle of poetic precedent: the compendium intends to function as the standard register against which a poet or critic can consult the received judgment. The work survived through Míng prince Yuèchuāng Dàorén 月窗道人 (Yuèchuāng of the Zhū princely line), whose recension rearranged the contents and supplied a new title.

Tiyao

Shīhuà zǒngguī qián jí, 48 juǎn; Hòu jí, 50 juǎn. By Ruǎn Yuè 阮閱 of the Sòng. Ruǎn has a Chēnjiāng bǎiyǒng 郴江百詠 already catalogued KR4d0186. Hú Zǎi 胡仔’s preface to the Tiáoxī yúyǐn cónghuà 苕溪漁隱叢話 KR4i0029 says: “Ruǎn Yuè of Shūchéng, when he was prefect of Chēnjiāng, compiled the Shīzǒng 詩總, very thorough; he took the old and new shīhuà and added the xiǎoshuō 小說 of various authors, dividing them by category and broadening their compass; only the shīhuà of the Yuányòu gentlemen 元祐諸公 and after were not included.” Hú further observes: “He compiled this Shīzǒng in Xuānhé guǐmǎo (1123). At that time the Yuányòu literature was under interdict and unusable; so Ruǎn deliberately abbreviated it.” Taking what Hú says: the work was originally titled Shīzǒng; under what hand it was renamed [Zǒng-]guī is not known. The present recension was the Míng-dynasty edition of Yuèchuāng Dàorén 月窗道人, a Míng prince, who further altered Ruǎn’s name to “Ruǎn Yīyuè” 阮一閱 — a particularly grotesque corruption.

The qián jí divides into 45 mén and draws on 100 sources; the hòu jí into 61 mén and again 100 sources. The compilation gathers up old text, yielding much for verification (kǎozhèng 考證). Only the splintering into so many fine categories — fēnlèi suǒxiè 分類瑣屑 — is a real departure from the form. The Chēnyáng Lǐ Yì 李易 preface says: “Ruǎnzǐ’s original collection was quite tangled; Yuèchuāng laid out the items and condensed it, ordering the categories with sense; the knots can be unravelled.” So this book has been edited and rearranged; the original divisions are no longer.

Abstract

The Shīhuà zǒngguī belongs to the early Southern-Sòng synthesizing impulse — the project of consolidating the great quantity of Northern-Sòng shīhuà (Ōuyáng Xiū’s KR4i0006 Liùyī shīhuà opening the genre in 1067, then Sīmǎ Guāng’s KR4i0007 Xù shīhuà, Liú Bān’s Zhōngshān shīhuà KR4i0008, Chén Shīdào’s Hòushān shīhuà KR4i0009, Wèi Tài’s LínHàn yǐnjū shīhuà KR4i0010, and the swarm of late-Northern shīhuà such as Wú Jiān’s Yōugǔtáng shīhuà KR4i0011) into a single thematically-arranged reference work. The original title Shīzǒng 詩總 (“Comprehensive Compendium of Poetry”) and the date Xuānhé guǐmǎo 1123 are fixed by Hú Zǎi’s testimony in his own preface to the Tiáoxī yúyǐn cónghuà KR4i0029 of 1148–1167. Hú Zǎi’s Cónghuà is in fact the immediate continuation of and reaction to the Zǒngguī: Hú judges the Zǒngguī deficient on three counts — its over-fragmented categorization, its omission of Yuányòu material under the Cài Jīng 蔡京 proscription of 1102–1126, and its inclusion of marginal xiǎoshuō — and the Cónghuà is structured by chronological poet rather than by mén.

The two-part structure (qián jí 1123 plus hòu jí, the latter probably finished after Ruǎn’s 1127 appointment to Yuánzhōu 袁州) is one of the few large-scale Northern-Sòng shīhuà compendia to have survived the Jìngkāng 靖康 catastrophe substantially intact. Together with Hú Zǎi’s Tiáoxī yúyǐn cónghuà KR4i0029 and the later Wèi Qìngzhī’s Shīrén yùxiè KR4i0036, it forms the trio of Sòng shīhuà compendia on which all subsequent reception of Northern-Sòng poetic criticism rests. Many short Northern-Sòng shīhuà — including Wú Jiān’s Yōugǔtáng KR4i0011 and other texts otherwise transmitted only in fragments — survive principally through quotation in this work. The Míng Yuèchuāng Dàorén recension is the form in which the work has come down: it altered both the original arrangement and Ruǎn’s name (rendering him “Ruǎn Yīyuè” 阮一閱). A pre-Yuè-chuāng recension was rediscovered in the Sòng Shànběn book trade and described in twentieth-century textual scholarship (see Zhōu Běnchún’s modern collation).

The work’s classification scheme is one of the earliest large-scale lèishū 類書 organizations of literary criticism — categories run from Shèngxián 聖賢, Tiānzǐ 天子, Hòufēi 后妃 down through topical headings (biānsài 邊塞, guīyuàn 閨怨, shānshuǐ 山水, yǐnyì 隱逸, chá 茶, jiǔ 酒, qín 琴, hé 鶴, zhú 竹, méi 梅, etc.). Ruǎn’s primary inheritance — both methodological and conceptual — is the Yuányòu generation, despite his programmatic omission of their texts under political duress.

Translations and research

• Zhōu Běn-chún 周本淳, ed., Shī-huà zǒng-guī 詩話總龜, 2 vols. (Rén-mín wén-xué, 1987) — the principal modern critical edition, collating the Yuè-chuāng recension against an earlier Sòng cán-běn 殘本.
• Cài Zhèn-chǔ 蔡鎮楚, Zhōng-guó shī-huà shǐ 中國詩話史 (Hú-nán Wén-yì, 1988) — locates the Zǒng-guī in the history of the genre.
• Guō Shào-yú 郭紹虞, Sòng shī-huà kǎo 宋詩話考 (Zhōnghuá, 1979) — fundamental bibliographic study; analyses the relation between Zǒng-guī and Hú Zǎi’s Cóng-huà.
• Ronald Egan, The Problem of Beauty: Aesthetic Thought and Pursuits in Northern Song Dynasty China (Harvard, 2006) — places the shī-huà compendia in the wider aesthetic discourse of the Sòng.
• Lín Mèi-yí 林玫儀, “Shī-huà zǒng-guī yán-jiū” 詩話總龜研究 (Tái-wān Dà-xué dissertation series).

Other points of interest

The Zǒngguī is the principal vehicle by which dozens of short or lost Northern-Sòng shīhuà survive at all. The arrangement-by-topic is, by the Sìkù editors’ standards, an aesthetic flaw — but for the modern textual scholar it is the work’s principal value, since it forces the categorization of poetic concerns at a level of granularity unparalleled in any rival compendium. The political shadow of the Cài Jīng 蔡京 Yuányòu xuéshù chàngzhī 元祐學術禁 — the proscription of the Yuányòu literary circle’s writings during 1102–1126 — is directly visible in the work’s deliberate omission of Yuányòu authors, a silence that itself becomes evidence for the late-Northern-Sòng cultural politics that shaped what could be said about poetry.

Links

• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §30.5.
• Kyoto Zinbun Sìkù tíyào
• Wikidata Q11099293 (詩話總龜).
• Zhōu Běnchún ed., Shīhuà zǒngguī 詩話總龜 (Rénmín wénxué, 1987).