The Art of Allusion in Chinese Poetry

Framed within Chinese traditional poetics about allusion, the book focuses on the rhetorical function of allusion in Li Shangyin’s (ca. 812-858) poems. While explicating the allusive process between the alluding and evoked texts, the book formulates an English language taxonomy regarding the practice of allusion in Chinese poetry. The book draws attention to the non-allegorical similarity between the poet’s spiritual solitude and a lovelorn woman’s life in Li’s love poems, shedding light on conventional interpretations of gendered poetic images as allegory for the political relationship between the ruler and the official. Its tackling of Li Shangyin’s artful manipulation of different modes of reading historical allusion reveals how his poems on history produce metaphorical and allegorical effects. The book’s finding that some of Li Shangyin’s allusions verge on the unintelligible will broaden the perspectives of scholars and students of Chinese literary studies and enhance their appreciation of Chinese poetic ambiguity.