Du Fu Transforms: Tradition and Ethics amid Societal Collapse.

• Author: Yang, Xiaoshan

Du Fu Transforms: Tradition and Ethics amid Societal Collapse. By LUCAS RAMBO BENDER. Cambridge, MA: HARVARD UNIVERSITY ASIA CENTER. Pp. xiii +411. $65.

In this book, Bender explores two interrelated literary cultural processes: Du Fu's transformation as a poet and the consequent or resultant transformation of critical assumptions about how poetry (and especially Du Fu's poetry) should be read. In the wake of the An Lushan Rebellion in the middle of the eighth century, Du Fu underwent a profound crisis. As he tried to make sense of his lived experience, he increasingly found traditional values--literary, philosophical, historiographical, and ritual--to be inapplicable or inadequate. His search for alternative lenses through which to examine and interpret the realities of his life did not yield definitive or unambiguous answers, but it did bring about new perspectives on his failures and frustrations. These perspectives informed and fostered a new kind of poetry that, though little understood or appreciated at the time, generated in time a new mode of reading that would dominate in the Chinese tradition up to the present day.

Underlying Bender's critical narrative is the notion of a seismic shift in the Chinese hermeneutics of poetry from the "late medieval period" (sixth to eighth centuries) to the "post-medieval period" (eleventh century to the present). In the earlier period, according to Bender, poetry was thought to manifest or express values that derive ultimately from esoteric sources. Poetry possesses the effective power to steer the natural dispositions of readers in the proper direction. In obvious and subtle ways, good poets propagate and perpetuate normative moral, political, and cultural values originally formulated and taught by ancient sages. Poetry thus plays a crucial role in preserving and continuing the grand cultural tradition--"This Culture of Ours" [phrase omitted]. In contrast, Du Fu criticism from the eleventh century onward turned to a new approach. Bender calls this approach "recordizing reading." Its basic premise is that poetic texts record "extratextual realities present to the writer at the time of the poem's composition" (p. 8). The value of poetry thus lies not so much in its revelation or suggestion of moral truths rooted in some transcendent sources as in the poet's accurate record of, and proper response to, the contemporary historical events and realities.

Bender's lucid and sophisticated exposition in the seven chapters of the book unfolds along a chronological line. The argumentative agenda behind this structure is to...