Notes

Notes

1. This chronological division is from Xing Lu, Rhetoric in Ancient China, fifth to third century B.C.E., Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 1998.

2. See also Kirkpatrick (“Chinese Rhetoric: Methods of Argument”).

3. Bo Le and Pao Ding are mentioned by Zhuangzi (360 BCE). Bo Le was a master equestrian and Pao Ding a master chef. When Bo Le was learning about horses, he saw horses in everything. When Pao Ding was learning to butcher cows, he saw all cows as dead cows. The point Wang Chong is making is that seeing ghosts is second nature for the sick. Everything they see becomes a ghost.

4. “Knotting grass” is an expression meaning to repay a favour after death.

5. This comes from Section 10 of Chen Kui’s Wen Ze.

6. The Huai Nanzi is a work of 21 essays on a range of subjects that were presented to the Emperor Wu of the Western Han in 139 BCE.

7. The excerpt is taken from the final part of Chapter 12, Attack by Fire, from the translation by R.L. Wing, The art of strategy: a new translation of Sun Tzu’s classic “The art of war,” New York, Doubleday, 1988.

8. Li Po (Li Bai, 李白) 701-762.

9. The first part of this chapter draws on Andy Kirkpatrick, “Medieval Chinese rules of writing and their relevance today,” Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 2004, 27, 1, p1-14. A translation and commentary of The Rules of Writing is provided in Kirkpatrick, Andy, “China’s first systematic account of rhetoric: an introduction to Chen Kui’s Wen Ze, Rhetorica XX111, 2, p103-52.

10. For example, Liu Yancheng, Wenze zhuyi, (Commentary on the Wenze), Beijing, Shumu Wenxuan Chubanshe.

11. Two Chinese scholars who have expressed this view are Wang Songmao in his Wen Ze zhuyi bayu (A Postscript to Liu Yancheng’s Commentary and Modern Chinese Translation of the Wen Ze) 1988, 283–295 and Zhou Zhenfu in his Zhongguo xiucixue shi (A History of Chinese Rhetoric) Beijing: Shangwu yinshu guan.

12. Negative rhetoric deals with such aspects of rhetoric as text structure and argument sequencing. Positive rhetoric deals with rhetorical tropes. George Kennedy (1980) makes a comparable division of Classical Western rhetoric into primary rhetoric, the art of persuasion, although this was primarily oral, and secondary rhetoric, the study of tropes and figures of speech.

13. To ensure a clear distinction is made between the examples Chen Kui cites and his own commentary, I have placed the cited examples in italics.

14. The reference to the colour of people’s skins reflects the belief that workers and farmers developed dark faces as they worked outside in the sun, while people with white faces were indoor workers (and therefore seen to be of higher class).

15. This is taken from an interview with Zhou Youguang reported in the South China Morning Post newspaper of July 20, 2010 by the journalist Mark O’Neill.

16. 山长 is the Chinese for Shanzhang or college president. The Chinese for the other Shuyuan positions described here include: 副山长, 助教, 讲书, 监院, 首士, 学长, 副讲, 堂长, 管干, 典谒, 经长, 学长, 书斋长, 引赞, 厨房工役, 门斗, 堂夫, 斋夫, 看司, 看碑, 看书, 更夫.

17. Dao Caoren or Straw Man is a character in Chinese fairy tales.

18. As these are excerpts from discourse, they are relatively long. I therefore only give a literal translation (and, where needed, a more polished one) of the excerpts. A fuller account can be found in Kirkpatrick, “Information Sequencing”, “Are they really so Different?”, “The Arrangement of Letters”.)

19. A quote from the first song in a collection of nine by the Tang poet, Liu Yuxi, entitled “Willow Branch.”

20. A reference to the “Two Whatevers” policy articulated by Hua Guofeng, who succeeded Mao Zedong as the chairman of the Communist Party of China upon Mao’s death: “We will resolutely uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made, and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave.”

21. Note that “counterrevolutionary rebellion” was Deng’s term. Note also that the “we” provided in the English translation is not in the original Chinese, so a more accurate translation might be “then his interpretation must be overturned and corrected.”

22. Yao Nai’s classification: 论辨 (argumentations), 序跋 (prefaces & postscripts), 奏议 (presentations/discussions/petitions to the emperor), 书说 (letters), 赠序(farewell essays), 诏令 (edicts & orders), 传状 (biographies), 碑志 (epitaphs), 杂记 (miscellaneous writings), 箴铭 (extortations & inscriptions), 颂赞 (odes & pronouncements), 辞赋 (prose poetry & rhapsody), and哀祭 (condolence & lament writings/elegies).