The Birth of “Zhuang-Sao” : Han Yu's Reception of the Zhuangzi as Literature

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Other Title
  • 「莊騷」の誕生 --韓愈における文學としての『莊子』の受容--
  • 「 ソウソウ 」 ノ タンジョウ : カンユ ニ オケル ブンガク ト シテ ノ 『 ソウジ 』 ノ ジュヨウ
  • 「荘騷」の誕生 --韓愈における文学としての『莊子』の受容--

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Abstract

The term “Zhuang-Sao” 荘騒 is a joint designation for the Zhuangzi 荘子 and the poetry of Qu Yuan 屈原. This designation is said to have been coined by Han Yu 韓愈 (768‒824) of the Tang and subsequently became a concept widely used in literary criticism and elsewhere, but it has not been fully shown why Han Yu used this designation. This paper discusses the reasons behind the birth of the joint designation “Zhuang-Sao” and its significance through an examination of the distinctive features of Han Yu's reception of Zhuangzi and Qu Yuan. The ideas and allegories of the Zhuangzi had since earlier times had an influence on many works of literature, but the person Zhuangzi had been regarded as a recluse and a Taoist, and assessments of the actual writing style employed in the Zhuangzi had been quite limited, and it had not been properly positioned in the history of literature. In contrast, Han Yu viewed Zhuangzi as a writer and evaluated his book from a literary perspective. Qu Yuan is a typical example of a patriotic minister who was banished south of the Yangtze River, and Liu Zongyuan柳宗元 and Liu Yuxi 劉禹錫 responded to his writings by superimposing their own circumstances onto those of Qu Yuan. Han Yu, too, experienced banishment and wrote about Qu Yuan in his poems, but there is little sense of self-projection when compared with Liu Zongyuan and Liu Yuxi. It can be surmised, rather, that in assessing the poetry of Qu Yuan, Han Yu distanced himself from the image of Qu Yuan as a banished loyal minister. From this consideration of reception of Zhuangzi and Qu Yuan by Han Yu, we can reasonably conclude that he created the joint designation “Zhuang-Sao” by evaluating the Zhuangzi and Qu Yuan's poetry from a literary perspective that was divorced from intellectual thought, or spiritual and moral concerns. At the same time, this also meant that “Zhuang-Sao” could not rank with writings that conveyed the Confucian Tao. Behind the birth of this joint designation, there lay the attempts to create “ancient prose” (guwen 古文) in the ancient prose movement, and around the same time Liu Zongyuan was also paying attention to the literary aspects of the Zhuangzi, though he did not evaluate it as highly as Han Yu did. It is likely that this difference arose because Han Yu held in high regard the deviation from norms (or “absurd language” [huangtang zhi yan 荒唐之言]) to be seen in the Zhuangzi's modes of expression, whereas Liu Zongyuan reacted strongly against this.

Journal

  • 東洋史研究

    東洋史研究 78 (1), 33-69, 2019-06-30

    THE TOYOSHI-KENKYU-KAI : The Society of Oriental Researches, Kyoto University

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