An Allegory on Allegory: Reading "Ju song" as Qu Yuan's Ars Poetica

10.6420/DHJHS.199907.0069

Chen-Chen Tseng

allegory ； reopening of closure ； antithetical contrariety ； gender poetics ； writing from the periphery

東華人文學報

1期（1999 / 07 / 01）

69 - 101

英文

This paper argues that ”Ju song” allows us to read it as a monad-an allegory on allegory. Like other allegories, it teaches and delights. It contains in its first sixteen lines a symmetrical bipartite structure of an enclosed circle; the closure, once completed, reopens itself. This structural device, together with the repeated epithets, directs the reader to turn his linear course of reading into a spiral one. It proves that poetry is to be found not in a static product but in the on-going process, with the reader joining the poet in the quest, which, in this case, is simultaneously ethic and aesthetic. At the core of its fruit image hides Qu Yuan's gender poetics. Concerning the poet's interaction with reality, to achieve a complete mimesis, i.e., to represent discordia concors--to yolk together unity and diversity, antithetical contrariety is locally staged in this allegorical poem through syntactical juxtaposition of opposites. Consequently, ”Ju song” turns out to be an allegory on correspondence as well as disparity between Nature and culture with its last four lines specifically dealing with the different effect of decay and death on vegetation and humanity. When read as writing attempted at the periphery to emulate and challenge the center, ”Ju song” is not only Qu Yuan's ars poetica but also a political manifesto.