Week Two: April 5 The Magic Power of Words.

The early history of writing in China. The use of written words in divination, magic, and scripture. Daoist elements in calligraphy.

Assignments:

Visit museum for an overview of the exhibition

Reading: You may prefer to read the articles in the order in which they were published: Ledderose, Boltz, Tseng, then Nylan, rather than the order they are listed in in the syllabus. This will make some issues, especially in Nylan, clearer.

Michael Nylan, "Calligraphy, the Sacred Text, and the Test of Culture," in Cary Liu, Dora Ching, and Judith Smith, eds., Character and Context in Chinese Calligraphy, pp. 16-77.

*William Boltz, "Early Chinese Writing," World Archaeology 17 (1986),

420-36.

*Lothar Ledderose, "Some Daoist Elements in the Calligraphy of the Six

Dynasties Calligraphy," T'oung Pao 70 (1984), 246-78.

*Tseng Yuho, A History of Chinese Calligraphy, pp. 75-96.

Recommended further reading:

Tseng Yuho, A History of Chinese Calligraphy, scan remaining chapters.

Amy McNair, "Texts of Taoism and Buddhism and the Power of Calligraphic Style," in Robert Harrist and Wen Fong, eds., The Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy from the John B. Elliott Collection, pp. 224-39.

William Boltz. The Origin and Development of the Chinese Writing System.

David Keightley, Sources of Shang History.

Questions for class discussion

Nylan, "Calligraphy, the Sacred Text, and the Test of Culture"

1. Nylan (57) asserts that "the common assumption that China has from time immemorial been preeminently an `empire of texts' is demonstrably false." She does not name her opponents, but two recent books come to mind. Christopher Connery's The Empire of the Text argues for the authority of texts in Qin-Han China. Mark Lewis's Writing and Authority in Early China has a part titled the "Empire of the Text"; this book concerns the evolving uses of writing to command assent and obedience in early China. Can you imagine what their counter-arguments would be to Nylan's interpretation?

2. How much of Ledderose's argument would Nylan have agreed with? Where would she have disagreed the most vehemently?

3. Nylan notes that Shang oracle bone inscriptions "must have been made after the ritual application to the gods had been performed," and she goes on to conclude, "It is important to remember, then, that ritual communication between the spirit and human worlds did not take written form in Shang, so far as we know." (58, n. 2) In terms of providing written text with a sacred or supernatural investiture, does her observation really matter all that much, and is the conclusion she draws from this really logical?

4. In following Nylan's iconoclastic 7-step evolution of the term wen as a guide to the changing status of writing relative to oral recitation, what does she suggest about the role of politics (or "mere politics," 23) and class in the emergence of a calligraphic aesthetic? What does "reinfeudation" (21) have to do with aesthetics? Why does aestheticization supposedly reveal the ascendance of writing over oral rhetoric?

5. When a word is as ambiguous and rapidly-changing as Nylan shows wen to be, how can we ever be quite sure what it meant at any given time? How does this same uncertainty appear in the "new school" - "old school" (jinwen - guwen) text controversy and -- however ironically -- contribute to the eventual privileging of written versus oral tradition? Is the graphic nature of Chinese language distinctive in allowing for (or resisting) slippage in meaning over time?

6. In the rise of calligraphy as an art form, whose artistry attaches to the "special abilities" and reveals the "extraordinary dignity" of the writer (19), Nylan suggests that before the Eastern Han writers were primarily anonymous scribes and clerks, artisans employed by those of higher status; is this a wholly acceptable notion?

7. Nylan contrasts "art" with "functional beauty" (19), but by this do you think that she meant in the practice of writing as an art form, calligraphy somehow rose above function?

Boltz, "Early Chinese Writing"

1. Outline Boltz's three stage evolution in the development of early Chinese writing. At what stage, and in what context, are we first able today to see Chinese writing? If writing at that stage already constitutes a graphically "fully developed, mature, and versatile system" (429) with nothing "primitive" or "rudimentary" about it (424), what kind of a prior history -- graphic and contextual -- can you imagine for it? What is the basis on which Boltz charts an unfolding three-stage development for Shang writing?

2. In this contextual framework, can you envision any reason why oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions might constitute two different linguistic or graphic systems? On what basis does Boltz suggest (423-4) that bronze inscriptions reflect a "form" that my actually antedate that of oracle bone inscriptions?

3. Boltz refers to some scholars' "enthusiasm to see a relation between these marks [on neolithic ceramics] and Chinese characters" (430). Who do you imagine would possess this "enthusiasm" and for what kinds of reasons? Conversely, given the natural impulse to imagine the early phases of Chinese language's graphic development, why wouldn't most scholars possess some sort of "enthusiasm"?

4. What are the long-term aesthetic implications of the Chinese graphic system having remained historically "arrested" (429) at the "determinative" phase of its development (unlike Mesopotamian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs)? What are some of the long-term social implications?

Ledderose, "Some Daoist Elements in the Calligraphy of the Six Dynasties Calligraphy"

1. Ledderose points out many parallels between what was going on in religious Daoism in the fourth century and in the development of calligraphy as an art. What sort of causal connections do you think he sees at work here?

2. Ledderose makes much more of Wang Xizhi's connections to Daoist masters than the very exalted social status of his family. Do you think ranking at the very highest level of the aristocracy of this period would also help explain any features of his calligraphy?

3. How does the leading Daoist Tao Hongjing fit into the story Ledderose tells?

4. What does Ledderose mean by saying authenticity was a matter of degree (271)? How were calligraphic and Daoist texts similar in this regard?

5. According to Ledderose, those who were writing while in touch with the gods, like the mystic Yang Xi, seemed to have a preference for cursive and semi-cursive script. (257-8) He even speaks, in the case of Wang Xizhi, of investing secular cursive script with some of the qualities of sacred cursive writings? Why this preference among script types, and where does this leave regular script? Looking at any given writing style, textual content and production context aside, can you determine if it is religious or not?

Tseng Yuho, A History of Chinese Calligraphy

Mark up your copy by writing in the margins the approximate century of each of the illustrations in this chapter. Then try to keep chronology in mind as you look at them and think about these questions:

1. Are you more impressed by continuities over time or changes? What appear to be continuities? What changes can you detect?

2. Look particularly at the pieces of Han or earlier date. Do they in any way challenge Nylan's view that writing was rarely imbued with magic or spiritual force in early times?

3. Do you see any connections between star maps and talismans?

4. Look at the examples of dragon and bird script, figs. 4.12 to 4.16. Can you recognize any characters? Can you make any guesses? What might be the point of elaborating characters to the point of illegibility?