Yùxuǎn lìdài shīyú 御選歷代詩餘
Imperially Selected Verse-Remainder of the Successive Dynasties imperially commissioned by 聖祖玄燁 (御定); compiled by 沈辰垣 (奉敕編) and 王奕清 (奉敕編)
About the work
The Yùxuǎn lìdài shīyú 御選歷代詩餘 (“Imperially Selected Shīyú — that is, cí — of All Dynasties”) is the great comprehensive cí anthology of the Kāngxī reign: imperially commissioned by the Shèngzǔ emperor 聖祖玄燁 in Kāngxī 24 / 1685, executed by Shěn Chényuán 沈辰垣, Wáng Yìqīng 王奕清, and a Hànlín editorial board, and prefaced by the emperor himself in Kāngxī 46 / 1707, 7th month, day 12. 120 juǎn. The work was the Kāngxī cí-counterpart to the imperially commissioned comprehensive collections in other genres: it follows the Quán Táng shī (commissioned 1705), the Yùdìng pèiwén yùnfǔ (1704–11), and the Shījīng and Sìshū digests, and it set the editorial pattern that the Yùdìng cípǔ KR4j0086 (1715) would take up for prosodic taxonomy.
Imperial preface
The opening “Yùzhì xuǎn lìdài shīyú xù” 御製選歷代詩餘序 (“Imperial preface to the Selection of Verse-Remainder from the Successive Dynasties”, dated Kāngxī 46, 7th month, 12th day = 1707-08-09) lays out the editorial program in a historical scheme. The emperor opens with the formula that shīyú (i.e. cí) is the heir of the older yuèfǔ, “and its origin and growth can be told”; sets the yuánběn in the Shūjīng dictum shī yán zhì, gē yǒng yán 詩言志，歌永言; runs through the Shījīng 305 pieces’ classification into Yǎ and Sòng, the Hàn 郊祀 / 房中 / 鐃歌 sequences, the yuèfǔ name and its evolution, the Six-Dynasties cí-developments, Táng lǜshī practice (Lǐ Bái’s Qīngpíng set, Lǐ Yù’s Yì Qíné / Púsàmán, Liú Yǔxī, Wēn Tíngyún, Wéi Zhuāng…), the founding of Sòng cí under Zhōu Bāngyàn’s Dàshèng yuèfǔ and Liǔ Yǒng’s expansion to two-hundred-tunes-and-above, and the late-Northern-Sòng / early-Southern-Sòng flourishing. The preface ends with the editor’s xiōngzhōng wèibǐ against an exhausted Qīng-era tradition; the Sìyú (i.e. shīyú / cí) is to be received as a legitimate corpus, given its rightful canonization, and edited by the cí-loving Emperor’s Hànlín officials.
Tiyao
(The Sìkù tíyào for the Yùxuǎn lìdài shīyú is brief, in the form of an editorial fánlì 凡例 in the source file rather than a separate critical tíyào; the standard Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào (via Zinbun) reads:)
Yùxuǎn lìdài shīyú, 120 juǎn. Imperially commissioned by Emperor Shèngzǔ of the present dynasty; compiled by Shěn Chényuán, Wáng Yìqīng, and Hànlín officials, under imperial decree. The volume gathers cí of all dynasties from Táng to Míng, arranged not by topic but by tune; not by xiǎolìng / zhōngdiào / chángdiào — the Cǎotáng classification — but strictly by total character-count of tune. Categorically the principle is taken from the Yùdìng pèiwén yùnfǔ: an emperor-overseen, fully-bibliographic-apparatus selection, with tí-rubric (běnyì where the tune lacks a topic), cíhuà commentary, and source-attribution for each piece. 100 juǎn of the 120 contain cí by tune; the remaining 20 contain cíhuà (shīyúhuà 詩餘話), cí-allusion (shīyú gùshì 故事), cí-anecdote (shīyú yìshì 逸事), the círén xìngshì (poets’ biographical data), and cílùn (theoretical writing) — i.e. a full cí-encyclopedia. The selection is conservative-canonical: from the Huājiān jí KR4j0062 and the Cǎotáng line through the great Sòng masters down to Míng cí. As an imperially commissioned project, it is the Kāngxī-era authoritative cí canon, and was widely consulted by educated readers of the 18th century.
Abstract
The Yùxuǎn lìdài shīyú is the largest comprehensive cí anthology in Chinese history before the modern Quán Sòng cí: 120 juǎn, c. 9,000 cí by c. 1,540 poets, plus 20 juǎn of cíhuà apparatus. The work was begun in Kāngxī 24 / 1685 under imperial commission and completed in Kāngxī 46 / 1707, with the imperial preface in that year. Its editorial logic — “tune-by-character-count” classification, with full source-apparatus — distinguishes it sharply from the Cǎotáng / Huāān anthology line, and provides the methodological template for the Yùdìng cípǔ KR4j0086 (1715) and the Yùdìng qǔpǔ KR4j0089 (1715). Modern editors (Tāng Guīzhāng’s Quán Sòng cí notes; Wú Xiónghé) acknowledge it as the principal pre-modern survey, while noting that its conservative aesthetic (rooted in the Zhèxīpài cí-line that Zhū Yízūn 朱彝尊 had institutionalized just a decade earlier in his Cízōng KR4j0075) means a number of post-Sòng schools — the Yángxiànpài, the late-Yuán qǔ-line — are under-represented.
Translations and research
- Stuart Sargent, “Tz’u,” in Mair, ed., Columbia History of Chinese Literature — places Lì-dài shī-yú in cí-anthology history.
- Wu Hung, “Imperial Editorial Projects of the Kang-hsi Reign” — relevant for the political context.
- Ye Jianong 葉嘉瑩 / Yán Dí-chāng 嚴迪昌, Qīng cí shǐ — context.
Other points of interest
The Kāngxī emperor’s personal involvement in cí editorial work — his own preface explicitly catalogues the yuèfǔ tradition from the Shūjīng to the late Míng — was a major institutional confirmation of cí as a literary genre of equal dignity to shī and fù at the highest levels of the Qīng state. It also institutionalized the Zhèxīpài aesthetic line as the imperial preference.