Gendered Hermeneutics in Wang Yi’s Commentary on the Chuci

• In Event: Goddesses in Historical Perspective: Interpretation, Representation, Transformation

Abstract

Philologists have been complaining for centuries about the unreliability of Wang Yi’s late Han dynasty commentary on the Chuci. It is, however, the earliest received commentary and the foundation of the anthology’s interpretive tradition; modern scholars who attempt to recover the poems’ pre-Han significance have no choice but to proceed back through it. In light of its continual relevance and problematic nature, this paper will demonstrate that Wang Yi’s Chuci zhangju performs a curiously gendered hermeneutics in line with late Han ideology. While it does not attempt to fictionalize all of the spiritual imagery in the poems, it does translate references to the erotic rites of Chu shamanism into the ritual propriety of Han Confucianism; that is, from a discourse in which women may have a public social role and spiritual exercise may include the pursuit of female deities into a discourse in which male courtiers may only appropriately seek companionship with other male courtiers. Goddesses, in this reading, are figures for mortal men, while male deities may figure the godlike emperor, or themselves. Considering the relative restriction of women and rationalization of government that occurred between Warring States Chu and the Eastern Han, Wang Yi’s assertion that the erotic quests of the Chuci are allegories of male-dominated state politics appears to be a case of “Hanification.” Nevertheless, it is Wang Yi’s interpretation of the anthology, including his gendered theory of its rhetoric, that has persisted in the scholarly institution and literary imagination.

Author

• Monica Eileen McLellan Zikpi, University of Oregon