Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-twenty-second issue:

"Self-Reflexive Vulgarity in Wang Fanzhi's Poetry," by Zihan Guo.


http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp322_wang_fangzhi_poetry.pdf

ABSTRACT

A great number of poems unearthed from the Dunhuang manuscripts in the early twentieth century bear the name of a certain Wang Fanzhi. He was praised as an enlightened vernacular poet in multiple literary references from the Tang and Song dynasties. The exact author of these poems remains an enigma, yet the whole corpus speaks for a collective voice of a group of anonymous vernacular poets. This paper explores the sensitive interiority filled with dramatizations behind Wang Fanzhi’s corpus, whose persona is portrayed as unabashedly ignoble by a sarcastic brush. Reading Wang’s corpus along with that of contemporary Hanshan reveals its eccentricity: its poetic voice blatantly identifies with the vulgar without any protestation of a noble or morally superior mind. While its sarcasm fires at all walks of life, it is also directed against itself.

Keywords: Wang Fanzhi, 王梵志, vernacular poetry, satire, Hanshan, Tang dynasty, Dunhuang manuscripts

 

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Victor H. Mair, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature
Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
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