Book Talk: 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘶𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘢𝘳𝘬: 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 “𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘘𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴” 𝘈𝘤𝘳𝘰𝘴𝘴 𝘛𝘸𝘰 𝘔𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘢

Speaker/Author: Nicholas Morrow Williams, Professor of Chinese at Arizona State University 

Moderator: Michael Puett, Victor and William Fung Foundation Director, Harvard University Asia Center; Walter C. Klein Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology; Harvard College Professor

Presented online via Zoom. To join, register here. 

About the book: Dialogues in the Dark traces how Chinese readers and scholars since the Han dynasty have variously interpreted the ancient poem “Heavenly Questions” (Tianwen), an enigmatic work attributed to Qu Yuan (fl. ca. 300 BCE). The poem, composed entirely in the form of questions, is an extended inquiry into early Chinese cosmology and history. Over centuries, readers of the poem came to radically different understandings, each providing a unique perspective on its meaning. The poem’s reception history comprises three main stages: first, the commentary compiled by Han scholar Wang Yi (ca. 89–ca. 158); second, the response by Tang poet Liu Zongyuan (773–819); and third, the interpretations developed subsequently by late imperial and modern scholars. Nicholas Morrow Williams analyzes how the poem’s meaning evolved in different time periods and provides three new translations of “Heavenly Questions” to represent the three stages, respectively. The ultimate thesis of this study, inspired by the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, is that this poem is best understood in light of the different interpretations supplied by readers over time in lively dialogues that continue even now.

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