Zhong Rong's Shipin and the aesthetic awareness of the Six Dynasties

grantor: University of TorontoZhong Rong's (ca.463-520) Shipin (Classification of Poetry) has been recognized by modern scholars as the first and one of the most important critical works in the history of Chinese literary theories. It deals exclusively with the subject of poetry and discusses many basic but important poetic issues. As a critical work, the Shipin is markedly different from earlier criticism. It is not a mixture of socio-political and literary comments but a work that was consciously written to fulfill the increasing demand for literary criticism of that time. It treats poetry as an autonomous entity that ought to be justified on its own terms. This study is an attempt to explore the significance and innovation of the Shipin in a systematic manner. More specifically, it probes the following issues: First, it introduces and examines the theoretical debate and the discussion of the Six Dynasties to see how the Shipin benefited from them in terms of its theoretical framework and poetic terminology. Second, it studies the key concepts and critical methods in the Shipin by placing it in a broader context of the aesthetic pursuit of the Six Dynasties. Third, it observes how the Shipin embodies the aesthetic awareness of the Six Dynasties and subsequently contributes to Chinese poetics in general. The study concludes that the Shipin is a serious critical endeavour. Its emergence signified that pure poetry criticism independent of canonical exegesis had come to light and critical methodology that centred on aesthetic appreciation had been established. The study also concludes that the Shipin brings order and system to the previously random and scattered discussion of poetry; its concepts and vocabulary prove to be beneficial to later poetics.Ph.D