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Fictionality as a rhetorical resource in Zuozhuan

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Abstract

Zuozhuan (Spring and autumn annals with Zuo’s commentary) initiated a narrative practice in Chinese historiography, which features not only records of historical events, but also various mysterious and unsubstantiated phenomena, such as divinations, omens, acts of mystical justice, apparitions and dreams. They played important roles for interpreting fictionality as a rhetorical resource in Zuozhuan. To elaborate fictionality and its competing relations with factuality, this paper subscribes to some Chinese scholars’ idea that it is from Zuozhuan on that fictionality endows Chinese historiography some “literary cover”, and analyzes those events in Zuozhuan. Moreover, enlightened by a rhetorical approach to fictionality proposed by Nielson, Phelan, and Walsh, this paper examines fictionality in Zuozhuan in terms of communicative intent, sender of fictionality, receivers of fictionality, and consequences on the logos and ethos. It argues that the communicative intent of Zuozhuan facilitates its compiler to utilize various means of fictionality so that the receivers conceive many interpretive assumptions, thus shedding much light to later generations in composing history.

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Notes

  1. Different ways of rendering the book’s title have been offered by various translators. In the context of this article, we take the Zuozhuan as the title because this is an audio rendition from Chinese pinyin, as well as a common practice in recent years.

  2. See Kern (2013, p. 78), Li (2007, p. 2) and Legge (2011/1960, p. 33). As in my hands, the versions of Kern’s and Li’s works is of Chinese, here we only quote the exact words of Legge (2011, p. 33): “What has the greatest weight with me in favour of Tso’s general credibility is the difference between his commentary and those of Kung-yang and Kuh-lëang”. Kern (2013), Li (2007) and Pines (2002, p. 14) expressed similar ideas in this aspect.

  3. Egan (1977, p. 352).

  4. Guoyu, usually translated as Discourses of the states, is an ancient Chinese text that consists of a collection of speeches attributed to rulers and other men from the Spring and Autumn period (771–476 BC). Like that of Zuozhuan, its author is unknown, but it is sometimes attributed to Zuo Qiuming, the very assumed author of Zuozhuan. Because of this, comparative studies between these two works are quite common in China.

  5. Pines (2002, p. 14).

  6. Vankeerberghen (2009, p. 154).

  7. Fu (1999, p. 200).

  8. The translation of Luo (2007, p. 267)’s words is mine. Unless otherwise annotated, all English versions of the originally Chinese articles are mine.

  9. Nielson et al. (2015a, p. 62).

  10. Nielson et al. (2015a, pp. 62–63).

  11. Nielson et al. (2015a, pp. 63–71).

  12. Nielson et al. (2015b, p. 102).

  13. Nielson et al. (2015b, p.105).

  14. Nielson et al. (2015b, p. 107).

  15. Nielson et al. (2015b, p. 108; emphasis original).

  16. Nielson et al. (2015b, p. 109).

  17. Fu (1999, pp. 205–207). The corresponding Chinese expressions to these five types of events are Bushi (卜筮), Zaixiang (灾祥), Guiguai (鬼怪), Baoying (报应) and Mengzhao (梦兆). Fu has categorized them as “miraculous and mystical events”, believing that they are embodied at the fictional level of Zuozhuan. Reasons for regarding them as “fictional” lie in the incompatibility between recording events and recording facts. To make up this incompatibility, fictionality has been resorted to. In addition, differences between “subjective facts” and “objective facts” should be taken into consideration. More detailed explanations of these five notions will be found in “Fictionality as a rhetorical resource in Zuozhuan” section.

  18. Fu (1999, pp. 206–207).

  19. Pace Richard Walsh, according to whom, similar cases could also be in found Greek mythology, which was accepted as factual, but is regarded now as fictional (oral communication with R. Walsh (2017)).

  20. In this understanding, it is the ontological status of the unverified events that enforces their credibility. But that would be the topic of historical studies, an empirical field into which this paper does not fall. Emphasis of this paper lies in the discussion about how fictionality as a rhetorical resource has facilitated Zuozhuan in establishing a solid position not only in historically credible writing, but also in narrative constructing.

  21. Ba Gua, literally “eight symbols”, are eight trigrams used in Taoist cosmology to represent the fundamental principles of reality, seen as a range of eight interrelated concepts.

  22. Tso (2011/1960, p. 129). Unless otherwise annotated, all English translations of the Zuozhuan are from Jame Legge’s version. In this quotation, the Chinese words are original.

  23. Tso (2011/1960, p. 131).

  24. Tso (2011/1960, p. 92).

  25. While the religious implication of “serpent” in the Christian West lies in its being the “sinful instigator”, in China, “serpent” with its similar appearance to the non-existent divinely animal dragon, is always linked with some emperor or his royal family. For instance, Liu Bang, the founding father of China’s Han Dynasty, was rumored to have slaughtered a monstrous serpent before he rebelled against Qin Dynasty.

  26. Tso (2011/1960, p. 171).

  27. Fu (1999, p. 207).

  28. Tso (2011/1960, p. 120).

  29. Tso (2011/1960, p. 157).

  30. Tso (2011/1960, p. 6).

  31. Tso (2011/1960, p. 478).

  32. Tso (2011/1960, p. 619).

  33. Tso (2011/1960, p. 5).

  34. Such discussions could be found in works by ancient scholars like Du Yu (in Wei and Jin Dynasties), Liu Zhiji (in Tang Dynasty), and also those written by more recent ones, such as Yang Bojun, Shen Yucheng in the 1980s.

  35. Luo (2006, p. 154).

  36. Yu (1988, p. 11).

  37. See Schaberg (2001)’s chapters 5 and 6.

  38. Blakeley (2004, p. 229).

  39. Tso (2011/1960, p. 6).

  40. Tso (2011/1960, p. 684).

  41. Tso (2011/1960, p. 490).

  42. As a matter of fact, Luo (2007) summarized and lists ten areas in his article, which contains nine subtitles to indicated these areas, but a close scrutiny of these subtitles reveals that the editor had numbered “3” twice for two different areas.

  43. Luo (2007, p. 260).

  44. Blakeley (1981) mentioned him as Tu Yu, a politician, militarist, and a scholar. According to Baidu, the Chinese Wiki, he is the only other one (apart from Zhuge Liang) who has been ranked high both in martial arts and literary arts.

  45. Cf. Shan (2000).

  46. He (2000), quoted from Luo (2007, p. 265).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant Number: 17ZDA281). And I want to express my most sincere gratitude for the instructive suggestions made by anonymous reviewers as well as Professor Shang Biwu.

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  1. English Department, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai, 200240, People’s Republic of China

    Yuzhen Lin

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Lin, Y. Fictionality as a rhetorical resource in Zuozhuan. Neohelicon 45, 213–228 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-018-0423-3

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