Chinese Euphonics: Phonetic Patterns, Phonorhetoric and Literary Artistry in Early Chinese Narrative Texts

Jeffrey R. Tharsen

Open Access Published by De Gruyter 2024

Chinese Euphonics

Phonetic Patterns, Phonorhetoric and Literary Artistry in Early Chinese Narrative Texts

Jeffrey R. Tharsen

Volume 29 in the series Welten Ostasiens / Worlds of East Asia / Mondes de l’Extrême Orient

Overview

About this book

Open Access

What did Old Chinese prose sound like? Supported by digital texts, modern technologies and historical linguistics, Chinese Euphonics is a deep dive into the types of sound patterns that occur throughout the earliest corpora of narrative texts in the Chinese canon: the Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, the Classic of Documents《尚書》, the Zuo Commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals《春秋左傳》and the Discourses of the States《國語》.

Tharsen demonstrates how sound patterns in the speeches preserved in these foundational texts functioned in concert with form and meaning to create a "phonorhetoric," a tactic employed by some of the most eminent figures from Chinese antiquity to beautify and strengthen their arguments and ideas by making use of extensive phonological patterning and the power of sound.

Containing both a broad history of the study of prose rhyming and a wealth of new evidence, Chinese Euphonics lays the groundwork for a new and more comprehensive approach to the study of early Chinese texts.

Author / Editor information

Jeffrey R. Tharsen, University of Chicago, USA.

Topics

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Academics (Sinology, East Asian Studies, East Asian Linguistics)
Pages
- Main content: 230
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 14
- Tables: 14
Keywords: Paleography; Chinese Philology; Phonorhetoric; Western Zhou

eBook

Planned Publication: June 3, 2024
ISBN: 9783110663204

Hardcover

Planned Publication: June 3, 2024
ISBN: 9783110663105