Download The Role of Song Dynasty `Poetry Talks` in the Reception

The Role of Song Dynasty 'Poetry Talks' in the
Reception and Transmission of Poetry by Tang Women
Carolyn Ford [email protected]
Recent studies of women and women's literature in late imperial China have shed light on
the number and nature of active roles women played, roles such as producer, consumer,
collector, disseminator, etc. My work begins to address a time period, the Tang dynasty
(618-907 CE), which has been overlooked in this type of study. The women of Tang did
not have the opportunities to assume as many roles as women in the late imperial did, but
we can and should study the roles they did fill as producers of and literary subjects in
literature. Where my previous work focused on the Tang anthologies which included
women's poetry, this paper will report the results of a study on Five Dynasties and Song
Dynasty unofficial histories and 'poetry talks.' These sources illustrate the extent to which
individual male commentators read poetry by Tang women, thereby allowing me to
analyze their motives for reading and commenting on the poems. Although the motives
and judgments of individual male commentators differed, their writings on the poetry of
Tang women result in similar outcomes, namely that of preserving particular poems and
establishing a hierarchy of literary merit among Tang women (which endures long after
the fall of the Song dynasty).