This year our seminar investigates the role and meaning of language and its forms of expression—poetic foremost—in the sinographic sphere, where the Literary Sinitic Buddhist canon was used and shaped. In this second session, Jean Tsui's paper explores the Ming philosopher Wang Yangming's (1472-1529) invention of “song poems” and the implications of creating forms without content for his philosophical vision. Jiangnan Li's paper investigates how Song Emperor Taizong’s (r. 976–997) poetic compositions shape new religious meanings by blending Buddhist, Daoist, and Sinitic literary and musical forms. Laurie Patton's and Heather Blair's responses will bring our presenters' work into broader conversations on language and poiesis that this seminar has fostered, including last year’s discussion of poetics in early and medieval South Asia.
This paper examines the evolution of the Ming philosopher Wang Yangming’s 王陽明 (1472–1529) poetry and his invention of “song poems” (歌詩 geshi). Through examining the rhyming and stylistic features of Wang's invention of the “Singing Method Synchronizing the Nine Tones and the Four Seasons” (jiusheng siqi gefa 九聲四氣歌法), a compositional method that sacrificed literary refinement for musical consistency, the paper explores what it means for Wang Yangming to create poetic form without content, the implications of pursuing morality without a moral reference, and how Wang’s invention of the “song poem” aligns with, complicates, and potentially jeopardizes his philosophical vision.
This paper investigates the poiesis of language in Song Emperor Taizong’s 宋太宗 (r. 976–997) poetic compositions—Mizang quan 祕藏詮 (Explanation of the Secret Treasure) and Xiaoyao yong 逍遥詠 (Chants of the Unfettered)—completed around 988 and preserved in the Korean Buddhist Canon. Blending Buddhist gāthā, Daoist chant, and Sinitic poetic and commentarial forms, these works exemplify a syncretic style that allowed the emperor to shape new religious meanings through poetic expression. The texts’ flexible form, interlinear commentary, and rhetorical ambiguity enabled the integration of Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian elements while advancing esoterism as a central theme. This paper argues that it was through the poiesis of language—the creative shaping of meaning via hybrid poetic form—that Taizong articulated his role as interpreter and harmonizer of the Three Teachings, utilizing poetry as a powerful medium of imperial ideology and religious synthesis.