| Shijing [The Book of Songs] is the earliest anthology of Chinese poetry edited by Confucius. Maozhuan and Zhengjian are two seminal works of annotation and commentary of Shijing. When explicating the theme of each song, the authors of Maozhuan and Zhengjian both opted for the li approach. The notion of li (rites) adopted by Mao and Zheng is derived from ideas expounded in three books on li , namely, Zhouli, Yili and Liji. In the research on reading Shijing from the perspective of rites, much scholarship has been directed towards Zheng's work whereas Maozhuan, which is in fact a precursor to Zheng's work with respect to its approach to poetry, has been under-discussed.; Zheng Xuan (127–200) is a prominent scholar of the Eastern Han. Before completing Zhengjian, Zheng had already annotated Zhouli, Yili and Liji. Zheng's knowledge of these three books, to a large extent, influenced the way he edited and supplemented the Mao analysis of Shijing in his own work.; This dissertation attempts to compare Maozhuan with Zhengjian, together with Zheng's annotations of Zhouli, Yili and Liji. The investigation aims to explore the significance of the li approach to Shijing in Maozhuan, with special consideration of the supplements offered by Zheng Xuan's annotations of the three books on li and his own work, Zhengjian. It is hoped that this comparative study will throw into relief the similarities and differences between Maozhuan and Zhengjian in their li approach to Shijing. |
