Locating the Lyric Subject in Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics

FAIN: FT-52376-04

Paula Manette Varsano
Smith College (Northampton, MA 01060-2916)

How do the aesthetic ideals of the Chinese lyric tradition, especially as reflected in the "Great Age" of the Tang Dynasty (618-906), fit into the larger picture of traditional ways of imagining the self and subjectivity? In this book-length study, I will examine how spatial depictions of the self, appearing in foundational Confucian and Daoist texts and the earliest historical biographies, are also at the heart of the evolving ideals and aesthetics of Chinese lyricism from its beginnings through the "Great Age."