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"Song Dynasty Literature and Culture." A Special Issue of the Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture, Volume 4, Issue 2, November 2017. Special Issue Editor: Ronald Egan. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017. Pp.: 209-441. $30.00 (paper).
In the "Forward to the Inaugural Issue" of the Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture (JCLC), which appeared in 2014 (https://read.dukeupress.edu/jclc/article/1 /12/iii/10027/Foreword-to-the-Inaugural-Issue). the Editors in Chief-Yuan Xingpei ... S (Peking University) and Zong-qi Cai (Cai Zongqi) ... (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Lingnan University)-vow "to create a platform for in-depth dialogue and collaboration between (Greater) China-based and Western scholars of Chinese literature and culture." The issues of JCLC that have appeared since confirm that the goals of the editors' platform have been, and continue to be, realized. Typically, two issues appear annually: one a general issue; the other on a special theme. The guest editor of the special issue on "Song Dynasty Literature and Culture" is Ronald Egan (Stanford University).
Eight essays subsumed under three headings comprise the volume: Su Shi Studies, The Literary Past, Literature and Moral Values, and Poetry. From an organizational perspective, general categories like this can help readers get a quick, early fix on the contents of the volume. At the same time, however, it is important to be aware that in this special issue of JCLC each essay has unique concerns and seeks to tackle a different issue. Hence, in this review, I am not concerned with identifying overall themes that might bind the various essays into some sort of coherent "whole." Rather, in my brief description and assessment of each contribution, my main concern is what is new about the study of Song literature and cultural history in the individual contents of these essays?
As indicated by their titles, two of the three contributions included under the heading Su Shi Studies -Xiaoshan Yang's (ШШШ) "Su Shi's Gift to Zhuo Qishun and the Sociality of Calligraphy" (216-247) and I Lo-fen's (Yi Ruofen ⅝¾^) (Ronald Egan, trans.) "A Study of Su Shi's Calligraphy Scroll Containing 'Rhapsody on Dongting Spring Colors Wine' and 'Rhapsody on Pine Wine of Zhongshan'" (279-305) -concern calligraphic scrolls. Neither article deals with the stylistic aspects or aesthetic qualities of...