Readers 读者
Review of The Sound and Sense of Chinese Poetry (Special Issue of the Journal Of Chinese Literature and Culture Volume 2, Issue 2. ISSN 2329-0048). Edited by Zong-Qi Cai. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015.
Reviewed by Lian-Hee Wee 黄良喜
Abstract 摘要
The inseparability between poesy and phonology, though long recognized, has often taken the back seat in literary studies, championing instead the analysis of metaphors, historical context, stylistics and genre. In fact, the editor himself echoed Alexander Pope in the quotation, “The sound must be an echo to the sense”. This special issue dedicated to the sounds and senses of Chinese poetry, the namesake fruit of an international conference in 2014, is therefore cogent beyond the usual demands of literary studies. As evident from the set of essays contained therein, the volume extends into a truly cross-disciplinary and multi-perspective research programme that promises to enrich not only our understanding of the literary works, but also the deeper cognitive aspects of our capacity for language, particularly phonology. I cannot help but wonder if Alexander Pope might be mistaken, because the sound in poetry is not an echo, it is the actual physical manifestation (acoustic-physics or articulatory-phonetics) of the senses encoded by the abstract symbols from the poets’ written hand.
The volume is structured into three main parts, bookended by the editor’s introduction at the onset and his theoretical reflections in the coda. I find reading the introduction particularly rewarding. The overview provided distills each article so elegantly that the volume as a gestalt of the various authors materializes as a crystalline tome treating Chinese verse and prose across nearly two millennia. A detailed review of each article in the collection is almost unnecessary as it is already so well-abstracted in the introduction.
Journal of Chinese Linguistics vol.45, no.1 (June 2017): 231-237
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