The Literature of Friendship in Late Medieval China

FAIN: FA-51420-05

Anna M. Shields
Arizona Board of Regents (Tucson, AZ 85721-0073)

In the first book-length study of friendship in China, I examine the significant body of texts composed among elite male friends in the mid-Tang era (c. 780-830), the cultural watershed of late medieval China. I explore a wide range of texts--such as letters, exchange poems, prefaces to collections, and funerary texts--by more than a dozen writers in the networks of Han Yu and Bai Juyi to demonstrate the increasing visibility of friendship as a social relation and its importance to literary composition in the mid-Tang. My analysis of the literature of friendship--writing by, for, and about men defined as friends--will reveal how late medieval writers worked together to transform "wen," literature in its broadest sense.

Associated Products

Remembering When: The Uses of Nostalgia in the Poetry of Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen (Article)
Title: Remembering When: The Uses of Nostalgia in the Poetry of Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen
Author: Anna M. Shields
Abstract: This article examines the changing character of nostalgia for their Chang'an youth in the exchange poetry of the mid-Tang poets Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen. It argues that the passage of time led the two poets to rewrite their past in very different ways, such that poetic exchanges in which they once "matched" (?) each others' sentiments evolved into a debate about the meaning of their shared experiences. Bai Juyi's relatively prosperous and tranquil exile in Jiangnan led him to see both past and present circumstances with greater equanimity, while Yuan Zhen's exile in Sichuan, where he came close to dying of malaria, made him far more bitter about lost opportunities and despondent about the future. The two poets' use of exchange poetry to celebrate nostalgia and then to revise their nostalgic visions reveals the extraordinary dynamism of ninth-century poetry, and its new importance as a means to explore personal and shared identities.
Year: 2006
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/remembering-when-the-uses-of-nostalgia-in-the-poetry-of-bai-juyi-and-yuan-zhen/oclc/101723301&referer=brief_results
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
Publisher: Harvard University

Words for the Dead and the Living: Innovations in the Mid-Tang Prayer Text (jiwen ??) (Article)
Title: Words for the Dead and the Living: Innovations in the Mid-Tang Prayer Text (jiwen ??)
Author: Anna M. Shields
Abstract: This article examines the new uses of the medieval genre of the prayer text (jiwen ??) in mourning close friends. In particular, it demonstrates the new rhetorical and emotional range of early ninth-century prayer texts written by and for literati companions. In Liu Zongyuan's 811 prayer text for his fellow exile Lu Wen's youthful death, Liu uses the prayer text as a vehicle for political anger and resentment of their collective fates in the wake of the Shunzong debacle. In Liu Yuxi's 819 prayer text for Liu Zongyuan, the prayer text becomes a performance of friendship for the literati community and a powerfully emotional communication to the spirit of Liu Zongyuan himself. Finally, in Bai Juyi's lengthy 831 prayer text for his longtime friend Yuan Zhen, the prayer text becomes a literary and personal biography of friendship, and it commemorates the ninth century's most famous set of poetic companions. In conclusion, the article argues that the transformation of the prayer text in the hands of these mid-Tang writers demonstrates the reach of their personal and literary ambitions towards the craft of _wenzhang_ ??, which extended even to the most conservative of literary genres, medieval funerary texts.
Year: 2009
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: T'ang Studies
Publisher: T'ang Studies Society

The Limits of Knowledge: Three Han Yu Letters to Friends, 799-802 (Article)
Title: The Limits of Knowledge: Three Han Yu Letters to Friends, 799-802
Author: Anna Shields
Abstract: This article examines the epistemological implications of friendship as they are explored in three letters by the mid-Tang literatus Han Yu (768-824). In these letters written to close members of his circle (Li Ao and Meng Jiao) and to a colleague who was also a patron (Cui Qun), Han Yu extends the concept of social knowing, "knowing people," _zhiren_, to that of knowing and understanding the Dao. Drawing on both personal experience and canonical arguments, Han creates three very different texts that nevertheless share the same fundamental argument: the ability to know, _zhi_, was a flexible and powerful force for shaping the human realm. Particularly in his letter to Cui Qun, Han Yu's explicit claim to social knowledge, or wide experience of friendship, becomes an important foundation for his even stronger claim to knowledge of the Way and its implementation in the world. These claims were both innovative and radical for their moment, but they were also a coherent element of Han Yu's defense of individual literary creativity and autonomy.
Year: 2007
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: T'ang Studies
Publisher: T'ang Studies Society

One Who Knows Me: Friendship and Literary Culture in Mid-Tang China (Book)
Title: One Who Knows Me: Friendship and Literary Culture in Mid-Tang China
Author: Anna M. Shields
Abstract: The friendships of writers of the mid-Tang era (780s–820s)?between literary giants like Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen, Han Yu and Meng Jiao, Liu Zongyuan and Liu Yuxi?became famous through the many texts they wrote to and about one another. What inspired mid-Tang literati to write about their friendships with such zeal? And how did these writings influence Tang literary culture more broadly? In One Who Knows Me, the first book to delve into friendship in medieval China, Anna M. Shields explores the literature of the mid-Tang to reveal the complex value its writers discovered in friendship?as a rewarding social practice, a rich literary topic, a way to negotiate literati identity, and a path toward self-understanding. Shields traces the evolution of the performance of friendship through a wide range of genres, including letters, prefaces, exchange poetry, and funerary texts, and interweaves elegant translations with close readings of these texts. For mid-Tang literati, writing about friendship became a powerful way to write about oneself and to reflect upon a shared culture. Their texts reveal the ways that friendship intersected the public and private realms of experience and, in the process, reshaped both.
Year: 2015
Publisher: Harvard University Asia Center
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-0674504370
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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