Of Admonition and Address: Right-hand Inscriptions (Zuoyouming) from Cui Yuan to Guanxiu

• Published in: Tʻang studies 2020, Vol.38 (1), p.28-56
• Main Author: Mazanec, Thomas J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 2nd century; Audiences; Confucius (551-479 BC); Genre; Hands; Inscriptions; Lyric poetry; Medieval period; Murders & murder attempts; Poetry; Poets; Readership; Wisdom
• ISSN: 0737-5034; 1759-7633; 1759-7633
• DOI: 10.1353/tan.2020.0000

This essay traces the development of the right-hand inscription (zuoyouming 座右 銘) from its birth in the second century CE through its culmination as a complex literary subgenre in the tenth. Over the course of these eight centuries, right-hand inscriptions were used by some of the most prominent poets of their respective eras, including Cui Yuan 崔瑗 (77–142 CE), Bian Lan 卞蘭 (ca. 230), Zhi Dun 支遁 (314–366), Bai Juyi 白居易 (772–846), and Guanxiu 貫休 (832–913). These writers used the subgenre to advocate for many different kinds of wisdom, often reflecting intellectual trends of their times. The inscriptions underwent a process of literarization, meaning they became more deeply embedded in a self-consciously literary tradition. By the end of this process, with the poet-monk Guanxiu, the temporal spectrum of address (past-present-future) comes to dominate the others. Poetic address, in this subgenre of verse as in shi-poetry 詩, comes to focus more on the literary tradition itself than the poem's immediate readership.