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Ten Thousand Scrolls: Reading and Writing in the Poetics of Huang Tingjian and the Late Northern Song, by Yugen Wang. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2011. Pp. xiv+285. $39.95 (hardcover).
As signaled by its multi-tiered title, Yugen Wang's Ten Thousand Scrolls: Reading and Writing in the Poetics of Huang Tingjian and the Late Northern Song is a book that aims to sustain arguments on several distinct but related fronts. Its core focus is to provide an account of the methodological program for poetic composition espoused by the eleventh-century poet and scholar-official Huang Tingjian (1045-1105). Huang Tingjian's comments about the cultivation of poetic skill persistently center on questions of reading and study, so an account of his poetics will inevitably address these dimensions as well. Other indispensible aspects of any account of Huang Tingjian's poetics include competing eleventh- and twelfth-century views on the history of poetry (particularly the relation between the achievements of various constellations of Tang poets to Song poetic practice) and Huang's relations with other major poets of his era (particularly his close connections with Su Shi and his circle). Finally, the composition and early reception of what came to be termed the "Jiangxi school"-the group of poets and critics of the generation or two after Huang Tingjian who were seen as following Huang's precepts and example - must be addressed as well, if for no other reason than that it is to these later writers that we are indebted for some of the most explicit and revealing accounts of Huang Tingjian's methods both in writing and in teaching poetry.
Ten Thousand Scrolls also aims to link Huang Tingjian's poetics to the broader cultural transformations driven by the rapid expansion of printing during this period. This study aligns itself with those modern scholars (and early advocates of Huang Tingjian) who regard Huang's achievement as the culmination of the entire history of Song poetry (or even medieval poetry tout court) up to his time, and in this sense it makes sense to explore aspects of the outlook and critical practice of this exemplary and epochal figure that are symptomatic of the larger transformation of the world of text just getting into full swing in this period. The general...