Formality and the pursuit of pleasure in early medieval Chinese banquet poetry

This dissertation studies the genre of banquet poetry ( gongyan shi) within the context of ancient and early medieval Chinese cultural conceptions of formality (or ritual) and pleasure. Through the close reading of poetry and ritual texts and traditional Chinese literary criticism, I have found that there is an inherent tension on the part of banquet participants and later readers of banquet poetry between the desire for pleasure and the need for formality to restrain behavior within the banquet setting. The first chapter provides an overview of the concepts of ritual and pleasure according to Han and post-Han dynasty interpreted Confucian philosophical texts such as the Analects, the writings of Mencius, Mozi and Xunzi, early ritual texts on music and early Daoist philosophical texts such as the Daode jing, the Zhuangzi and Liezi. In the second chapter, in order to gain a new approach to the structure of the banquet occasion, I read poetry from the Book of Songs as they are represented within the ritual text the Classic of Ritual and Decorum. The tension between formality and pleasure within these poetic texts I find to be especially obvious in the context of alcohol consumption. My third chapter considers the banquet poetry of the Jian=an era. Here I suspend the tendencies of traditional literary criticism, which favors a particularly opaque vocabulary to define the Jian=an poetry aesthetic, in order to read the banquet poetry for contrasting expressions of formality and pleasure, especially as it is produced within interior and exterior environments. The fourth chapter considers the anthologized examples of banquet poetry within the Wen xuan or Selections of Refined Literature . By analyzing those fourteen collected banquet poems, it is possible to gain a new appreciation of the performative function of the genre in the literary tradition, and read conceptions of formality that ultimately had wide distribution and influence on later banquet poetry. The final chapter presents a full translation and analysis of the Orchid Pavilion gathering poems composed in 353 C.E. at Kuaiji. It is within this series of poems that the conceptions of formality and pleasure are most dramatically tested and reconfigured within the vocabulary and context of Aabstruse poetry≅ or xuanyan shi. The desire for unfettered enjoyment of the natural surroundings and the search for the Principle (li) immanent within the landscape appear to cast off the burden of ritual, yet instead of leaving formality behind the participants are simply forging a new conception of codified social behavior that is a synthesis of Daoist religious practices and the Confucian tradition of self-cultivation.