CHEN ZHI
The Shaping of the Book of Songs
From Ritualization to Secularization
The present work is a study on the formation of the Shih-ching. The author poses the hypothesis that this collection of poems, as the standard music and literature passed down to later generations, initially incorporated different cultural heritages through a process which moved from ritualization to secularization, as well as standardization to localization.
In aiming to find the origins of the division of the Shih-ching into sections and subsections and their titles, as “Nan,” “Feng,” “Ya,” and “Sung,” the author employs an interdisciplinary methodology, combining ethno-musicological methods with paleography, philology, and archaeology. He draws on new archaeological data of the past two decades that has shed new light on the Shih-ching.
Contents
Chapter I
The State of the Field and the Methodological Concern
Chapter II
Yung 庸, Sung 頌 and Sunng 誦: Sacrificial Musical Works Performed in the Shang House
Chapter III
The Standardization of the Ya Music
Chapter IV
A Paleographic Analysis of Nan and Its Significance for Interpreting the Meaning of the “Nan” Section of the Book of Songs
Chapter V
The Localization of the Conception of Ya: The Revival of Shang Musical Elegance
Chapter VI
Towards a Conclusion
Bibliography
Monumenta Serica
Monograph Series LII
