Two Ages, one Agenda? Zhu Xi's Rules of Interpretation Versus Wang Yi's Exegesis of the Songs of Chu (Chuci)

Michael Schimmelpfennig
Heidelberg University

A particular feature of the exegetical tradition to the Songs of Chu is that major intellectual shifts between Han and Song times can hardly be detected in the commentaries that have come down on us. Even though this assessment might be due to the lack of source materials, both traditional and modern scholars alike regard Zhu Xi's collected commentary (Chuci jizhu) as the first major break away from a tradition of exegesis that limited itself to adding subcommentaries to the section and sentence commentary (Chuci zhangju) of Wang Yi. Contrary to this opinion an analysis of the exegetical approach of Zhu Xi reveals that the agenda of the eminent Song philosopher in dealing with the Songs of Chu is not very different from the one of Wang Yi. The aim both commentators have in common is to define the relation between the "Lisao" together with the other poems ascribed to Qu Yuan and the Book of Songs. Furthermore, in reaching their goal both commentators ultimately rely on the applicability of some of the "six poetic means" (liu yi), key elements within the "Great Preface" to the Shijing. The main reason why Zhu Xi considers his approach to be superior to that of his ancient predecessor is that he relies on what he considers to be orthodox hermeneutic instruments in order to retrieve the essential meaning of the poems.

First I am going to compare the approach and distinguish the rules that guided the interpretation of both Wang Yi and of Zhu Xi. Using the "Lisao" as an example I will then concentrate on the question how a rather similar agenda ultimately led to entirely different results due to the different application of the same apparatus.