by Chen Jack W
386–581
Northern Wei
386–581
Eastern
Wei
534–550
Western
Wei
535–556
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Dynasties and Periods
xvii
Northern Qi
550–577
Northern
Zhou
557–581
Sui
581–618
Tang
618–907
Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms
902–979
Song
960–1279
Northern Song
960–1127
Southern
Song
1127–1279
Yuan
1279–1368
Ming
1368–1644
Qing
1644–1912
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The Poetics of Sovereignty
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Introduction
Li Shimin 李世民 (599–649)—who would be known to history by his
posthumous temple-name of Taizong 太宗 (r. 626–49)—came of age
during the brief imperial reunification of the Sui dynasty. Prior to the Sui,
the lands of the former Han empire had been divided for close to four
centuries, with a series of mixed Chinese and Xianbei 鮮卑 regimes
known collectively as the Northern Dynasties ruling over the Central
Plains, and a series of Han-Chinese émigré Southern Dynasties colonizing
the region across the Yangtze River. The Sui began as a successor dynasty
to the Northern Zhou dynasty, but then successfully conquered the last of
the Southern Dynasties and thus reunited north and south for almost
forty years. When the Tang overthrew the Sui, few could have expected
that the new dynasty would be able to preserve an imperial unity over a
longer period of time. As it turned out, however, the Tang would be cele-
brated as the second great age of Chinese empire, one that would arguably
surpass the great Han empire.
The Tang dynasty was a period of great military strength, economic
prosperity, and cultural achievement; its rulers exerted far-reaching influ-
ence over the kingdoms of Central Asia along the Silk Road, as well as
over the Japanese archipelago, the Korean peninsula, and the states of
Southeast Asia.1 The dynasty would reach the zenith of its power in the
middle of the eighth century, when it was stricken by a cataclysmic period
of rebellion and tumult that lasted eight years and resulted in massive
losses of life. After this, the Tang recovered, though it gradually lost
—————
1. For a useful overview of Tang power and influence, particularly as it was felt in the broader regional sphere, see Adshead, T’ang China.
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2
Introduction
centralized authority over the next century. The empire would devolve
into autonomous regional powers by the end of the ninth century and be-
ginning of the tenth. Even in its later political weakness, however, the Tang
economy and its cultural and intellectual life continued to flourish and, in
many ways, rivaled the period before the decentralization of state authority.
For many later rulers, officials, and scholars, the continuing vitality of
the Tang could be credited to Taizong and his court. Taizong’s quarter-
century long reign, which bore the name “Zhenguan” 貞觀 (“Constancy
Revealed”), has been remembered as an exemplary era of government.
Taizong was himself celebrated as a moral sovereign who heeded the ad-
vice of his talented officials, implemented wise policies, and sought to
bring about an age of lasting peace and prosperity.2 Both traditional and
modern historians have taken note of his impressive record of accom-
plishments and the aura of virtuous sovereignty that surrounded Taizong.
What the present study is concerned with, however, is not the historical
record of Taizong’s reign, but rather with how he represented the acts and
deeds of his reign. At the heart of the study is the way in which the second
Tang emperor constructed for himself a reputation for moral rulership,
one based upon the models of the sage-kings and cultural heroes of the
ancient past. Taizong was highly involved in the activities of his court,
where he brought about major reforms and changes to a range of dynastic
institutions; his lofty reputation was due in no small measure to these. In
terms of his received image as a moral sovereign, however, it was in
Taizong’s own literary writings, from self-authored edicts to his poems
and rhapsodies, that one first would see this representation taking shape.
I share with Harold Kahn’s earlier study of the Qianlong 乾隆 em-
peror (r. 1736–95) an interest in the relationship between historiography
and hagiography; indeed, Taizong, who was a model for the Qing em-
—————
2. The phrase zhenguan 貞觀 carries a number of classical and literary resonances, though its primary meaning for Taizong’s court is that used in the “Commentary on Appended
Phrases” 繫辭傳 in the Zhou yi 周易 ( The Zhou Changes, or more commonly, Classic of Changes): “The Way of Heaven and Earth is how it reveals its constancy” 天地之道，貞
觀者也. The Jin commentator Han Kangbo 韓康伯 (d. ca. 385) comments, “How clear it
is! Of the myriad things belonging to Heaven and Earth, all preserve their constancy in order to make complete their functions” 明夫！天地萬物莫不保其貞以全其用也.
See Zhou yi zhengyi, p. 74a, in Ruan Yuan 阮元 (1764–1849), ed. and annot., Shisanjing zhushu, p. 86.
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Introduction
3
peror, recognized and made abundant use of the historian’s revisionist
powers.3 Unlike Kahn, however, I am less focused on the biographical re-
alities underlying the construction of an imperial paragon, and more on
the literary and rhetorical strategies of sovereignty itself—which is to say,
on the question of imperial authorship. In this way, my study also differs
from earlier writings on the concept of sovereignty in early and imperial
China, which have confined themselves largely to questions of moral cul-
tivation and political power.4 What is missing from these accounts is both
an acknowledgment of how sovereignty has been articulated through cul-
tural forms and—conversely—how important cultural forms have been
to the articulation of s
overeignty. It is my broader contention that for
Taizong—and for the concept of sovereignty in general—the political
sphere was inextricable from the sphere of cultural production. To this
end, I will argue that cultural production is not subordinate to the politi-
cal, that it is not simply part of the ideological superstructure that serves
to legitimate the true operations of power.
Taizong’s interests in the broader cultural and aesthetic spheres have
been well-documented. He was concerned not only with what political
advantage might be gained through cultural patronage, but with the col-
lection of art in its own right.5 While he may not have been a connoisseur
on the level of Song Huizong 宋徽宗 (r. 1100–26), Taizong’s knowledge
of calligraphy was impressive.6 He was particularly fond of the Jin calli-
graphic master Wang Xizhi 王羲之 (ca. 307–ca. 365). Indeed, Taizong’s
attempts to buy up all existing examples of Wang Xizhi’s calligraphy led
to the submission of many forgeries to the imperial court.7 Not surpris-
ingly, the emperor’s own calligraphic style was based on that of Wang
Xizhi, and he was noted for his personal skill in the dry brush stroke tech-
nique known as “flying white” ( feibai 飛白). A brief anecdote mentions
—————
3. See Kahn, Monarchy in the Emperor’s Eyes.
4. See, for example, Vandier-Nicolas, “Le Thème de la souveraineté,” pp. 22–49; Loewe,
“Authority of the Emperors,” pp. 80–111; and Ching, Mysticism and Kingship in China.
5. For an overview of art during Taizong’s reign, see Karetzky, Court Art of the Tang, pp.
13–28.
6. On Huizong and cultural capital, see Ebrey and Bickford, eds., Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China.
7. See Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修 (1007–72) and Song Qi 宋祁 (998–1061), comps., Xin Tang
shu, 105.4024.
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4
Introduction
how, at a banquet held at Xuanwu Gate 玄武門, Taizong produced ex-
amples of his flying white calligraphy to give to members of his court, who
fought and clamored unceremoniously to snatch them from the em-
peror’s hand.8 Lastly, Taizong was a theorist of calligraphy. In addition to
his essay on Wang Xizhi, which was appended to Wang’s biography in the
Jin shu 晉書 ( History of the Jin Dynasty), Taizong wrote three essays on the practice of calligraphy.9
Taizong’s contribution to the history of Chinese art and aesthetics is
richly deserving of further study. My focus here, however, will be on
Taizong’s literary writings, specifically those that speak directly to the re-
lationship between cultural form and sovereign power, as well as on the
question of how the Tang negotiated dynastic identity through literary
stylistics. For Taizong, literature was central to the establishment and
consolidation of empire because it was in the space of literature that both
the empire and the emperor could be imagined—that is, articulated and
represented as images. This is what I will refer to as the constitutive power
of literature, or the role of the literary work in giving form and voice to
abstract political concepts and amorphous social institutions. I argue that
Taizong’s authorship of literary and political writings should not be read
simply as ideological propaganda. Though his writings may have been self-
serving at times, representing strategic attempts to control his self-image
in the eyes of his court and empire, they also become the ideal image to
which his self is normatively bound. This may be the paradox at the heart
of imperial authorship: Taizong simultaneously was the author of his rep-
resentation and was authored by his representation; he was both subject
and object of his writings.
The extent of Taizong’s interest in literature can be seen in the size of
his literary collection, which is the largest surviving collection of any of
—————
8. Liu Xu 劉煦 (887–946), comp., Jiu Tang shu, 74.2608. For a general account of Taizong’s interest in calligraphy, see Zhao and Xu, Tang Taizong zhuan, pp. 396–403.
Robert E. Harrist, Jr., discusses Taizong’s fascination with Wang Xizhi in his Landscape of Words, pp. 241–43. Also see Harrist, “Record of the Eulogy on Mt. Tai, pp. 68–79.
9. For the essay on Wang Xizhi, see Fang Xuanling 房玄齡 (578–648) et al., comps., Jin shu, 80.2107–8; and Wu Yun and Ji Yu, eds. and annots., Tang Taizong quanji jiaozhu, pp.
176–78. Taizong’s three essays on calligraphy are “On the Method of the Brush,” “On the Method of the Fingers,” and “On the Concept in the Brush.” See Dong Gao, 董誥 (1740–
1818) comp., Quan Tang wen, 10.123a–23b; and Tang Taizong quanji jiaozhu, pp. 157–60.
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Introduction
5
the Tang emperors, as well as one of the largest of the early Tang period.
The pieces of his collection consist of 108 shi 詩 (“lyric”) poems (listed
under ninety-nine titles), five fu 賦 (“rhapsodies”), and over four hundred
pieces of prose in various genres. The poems include both court occa-
sional pieces and moralistic meditations on the past, many of which take
on autobiographical turns or reflections on the role of the sovereign.
(There are, of course, questions regarding the authorship of the poems,
which I will discuss at the outset of Chapter 4.)
It is not until after the Tang that we first have documentation of the
size of Taizong’s collection and something of its contents. During the
Five Dynasties, in the “Treatise on Bibliography” (“Jingji zhi” 經籍志) of
the Jiu Tang shu 舊唐書 ( Old History of the Tang Dynasty), we see that
Taizong’s collection consisted of thirty fascicles.10 Following that, in the
Northern Song, the “Treatise on Arts and Letters” (“Yiwen zhi” 藝文志)
of the Xin Tang shu 新唐書 ( New History of the Tang Dynasty) lists a collection of forty fascicles.11 By the Southern Song, we have more specific
information about the collection. The bibliographer Chen Zhensun 陳振
孫 (ca. 1190–d. ca. 1262) notes that Taizong’s collection consisted of three
fascicles, in which sixty-five lyric poems, four rhapsodies, and a number of
prose writings were preserved.12 In the Ming, the two fascicles of the Tang
Taizong huangdi ji 唐太宗皇帝集 ( Literary Collection of the Emperor
Tang Taizong), which was derived from the anonymously compiled
Tangren shi ji 唐人詩集 ( Poetry Collections of Tang Persons), collect three fu and sixty-seven lyric poems. This was reprinted as Tangshi wushijia ji 唐詩五十家集 ( Literary Collections of Fifty Authors of Tang Poetry).13
The Ming anthology Tang baijia shi 唐百家詩 ( Poetry of One Hundred
Tang Authors), compiled by Zhu Jing 朱警 (fl. 1522–1566), contains the
Tang Taizong wen huangdi ji 唐太宗文皇帝集 ( Literary Collection of
the Cultured Emperor Tang Taizong), which consists of sixty-nine lyric
poems.14 Hu Zhenheng 胡震亨 (1569–ca. 1645) includes eighty-eight
———�
��—
10. Jiu Tang shu, 47.2052.
11. Xin Tang shu, 60.1597.
12. Chen Zhensun, Zhizhai shulu jieti, 16.466.
13. See Tang wushijia shiji fu suoyin, 1.1–2.6.
14. Academia Sinica in Taiwan possesses a Ming edition of this work in 184 juan. Harvard University has a microform copy of the Tang baijia shi series reprint.
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6
Introduction
titles plus one fragment in his Tangyin tongqian 唐音統籤 ( Assembled
Volumes of Tang Poems).15 The Qing dynasty Quan Tang wen 全唐文
( Complete Tang Prose) collects all five of the extant fu, as well as most (but not all) of his decrees, inscriptions, and other prose compositions, in a total of seven fascicles.16 The Quan Tang shi 全唐詩 ( Complete Tang Poems) collects a total of eighty-seven titles (ninety-nine lyric poems in all) and
several lines from incomplete or lost poems. This last anthology is the
most complete traditional source for Taizong’s poetry, though there are
all the usual caveats attached to the monumental Qing achievement.17
Beginning in the Ming dynasty, traditional critics have paid attention
to Taizong’s literary collection, though there was no consensus on the
quality of the writing. The critic Gao Bing 高
(1350–1423) began with
Taizong in his literary historical development of Tang dynasty ancient-
style pentasyllabic verse, writing:
The Cultured Emperor Taizong had the manner of a dragon or phoenix; his
Heaven-endowed cultural attainment elegantly blossomed forth. He gathered up
the talented and worthy, ushering in the Way. His “Visiting Qingshan Palace”
and other works in his time already were set to pipes and strings. Good and wise
officials filled the court, matching songs and “aiding in administration.”18