{"id":2328,"date":"2026-01-08T18:00:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T18:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/china\/?p=2328"},"modified":"2026-02-13T23:02:49","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T23:02:49","slug":"book-talk-the-poetic-way-of-xie-lingyu-with-ping-wang-uw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/china\/news\/book-talk-the-poetic-way-of-xie-lingyu-with-ping-wang-uw\/","title":{"rendered":"FEB 5 Book Talk: ‘The Poetic Way of Xie Lingyu’ with Ping Wang, UW"},"content":{"rendered":"

On February 5<\/strong>, University of Washington professor of literature Ping Wang, will give a book talk on her first monograph\u00a0The Poetic Way of Xie Lingyun :\u00a0Literary Expression and the Natural World<\/em> (University Press 2025).<\/p>\n

Professor Wang will be joined by Wendy Swartz<\/strong><\/a>, Chair and Professor of Chinese literature at Rutgers University for this talk.<\/p>\n

During the dark centuries between the fall of the Han dynasty in 220 CE and the golden age of reunified China under the Tang and Song dynasties (618\u20131279), the\u00a0shi\u00a0<\/em>poetic form embraced new themes and structure. In this meticulously constructed study, Ping Wang traces the social conditions that sparked innovation and marked a significant turn in intellectual history. Using biography, social history, and literary analysis, she demonstrates how the\u00a0shi\u00a0form came to dominate classical Chinese poetry, making possible the works of the great poets of later dynasties and influencing literary development in Korea and Japan.<\/p>\n

Focusing on the life of poet Xie Lingyun (385\u2013433), Wang traces the exile of aristocratic families in the wild south, which led to their thematic use of \u201cmountains and water\u201d (shanshui<\/em>) landscapes over the pastoral ones of earlier writers and artists. Changes in poetic form moved away from genres associated with aggrandizement of the imperial court and, through innovative use of meter and syntax, created a new style of varied, fluid cadence. In Xie\u2019s redesigned five-syllable-line poetry, couplets balanced contradictions that the poet used to capture principles of the natural world.\u00a0Wang shows how this literary form enabled exiled scholars to make meaning of their tentative existence in the southland, in which the mountains and water imaged the yin-yang principle underlying existence. The post-Han intelligentsia thus used the dilemma of southern exile to craft literature that was revolutionary in both content and form.<\/p>\n

Ping Wang<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0is professor of Asian languages at the University of Washington. She is author of\u00a0The Age of Courtly Writing:\u00a0Wen xuan\u00a0Compiler Xiao Tong<\/em>\u00a0(501-531)\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0His Circle<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Thursday, February 5, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

3:30 – 5PM<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thomson Hall 317<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Smiling<\/p>\n

Wendy Swartz is the author of Reading Philosophy, Writing Poetry: Intertextual Modes of Making Meaning in Early Medieval China\u00a0<\/em>(Harvard, 2018; translated into Chinese as\u300a\u8a69\u8ce6\u8207\u54f2\u5b78\uff1a\u516d\u671d\u6587\u5b78\u4e2d\u610f\u7fa9\u5efa\u69cb\u7684\u4e92\u6587\u6027\u6a21\u5f0f\u300b(Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2024))\u00a0and\u00a0Reading Tao Yuanming: Shifting Paradigms of Historical Reception\u00a0(427-1900)<\/em>\u00a0(Harvard, 2008; translated into Chinese as\u300a\u95b1\u8b80\u9676\u6df5\u660e\u300b(Taipei: Linking Press, 2014; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2016)). She is the principal editor of\u00a0Early Medieval China: A Sourcebook\u00a0<\/em>(Columbia, 2014; named as one of\u00a0Library Journal\u2019s Best Reference Title of 2015) and a co-editor of\u00a0Memory in Medieval China:\u00a0Text, Ritual, and Community<\/em>\u00a0(Brill, 2018). She is the translator of\u00a0The Poetry of Xi Kang (ca. 223-ca. 262)<\/em>, in\u00a0The Poetry of Ruan Ji and Xi Kang<\/em>, translated by Stephen Owen and Wendy Swartz (De Gruyter, 2017). She has also published numerous articles and essays on early medieval literature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On February 5, University of Washington professor of literature Ping Wang, will give a book talk on her first monograph\u00a0The Poetic Way of Xie Lingyun :\u00a0Literary Expression and the Natural World (University Press 2025). Professor Wang will be joined by Wendy Swartz, Chair and Professor of Chinese literature at Rutgers University for this talk. During<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":2333,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,7,9],"tags":[41],"class_list":["post-2328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-china-colloquium","category-faculty","category-news","tag-ping-wang","region-china","region-east-asia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFEB 5 Book Talk: 'The Poetic Way of Xie Lingyu' with Ping Wang, UW - China Studies Program<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/china\/news\/book-talk-the-poetic-way-of-xie-lingyu-with-ping-wang-uw\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"FEB 5 Book Talk: 'The Poetic Way of Xie Lingyu' with Ping Wang, UW - China Studies Program\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On February 5, University of Washington professor of literature Ping Wang, will give a book talk on her first monograph\u00a0The Poetic Way of Xie Lingyun :\u00a0Literary Expression and the Natural World (University Press 2025). 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