Social Sciences in China, 2025
Vol. 46, No. 1, 2025
Cross-Readings of the Book of Odes (Shijing): The Chinese Commentarial Tradition and Western Sinology
(Abstract)
Benoît Vermander
The Book of Odes formed the Chinese sensibility and constituted basic teaching material for two millennia. It also has been one of the main entry doors through which Western sinologists approached the world of ancient China. From the 17th century onwards, Chinese and Western readings have crisscrossed, giving new depth to the hermeneutics of the Odes. This contribution focuses on these hermeneutical encounters. Its first part traces the lines of interpretation suggested by their authorized exegete, Confucius, and the way this tradition was challenged by Zhu Xi. Some Western commentators will preferentially adhere to Confucius and its epigones, others will mobilize Zhu Xi’s theoretical openings for their own purpose. The second part analyzes how Marcel Granet has read the Odes according to their ritual context and the role they play within it. The third part broadens Granet’s approach, showing how the Odes can be approached as an ethnographic document, particularly in terms of religious ethnography, a task to which both Chinese and foreign authors have contributed. The fourth part looks at some of the readings that found an aesthetic standard in the Odes, in classical China and, as in echo, in the early history of their transmission in other languages. The fifth part extends this analysis, focusing on the updating of the structural rhetoric specific to the Odes. Finally, the last section returns to Confucius, not as he appears in the Analects, but as the author-function associated with the manuscript Confucius Speaks of the Odes (Kongzi shilun), a text that revives the question of the intention to be attached to the reading of the Odes and that constitutes a meeting point of present-day Chinese and Western scholarly concerns.
Keywords: Marcel Granet, oral literature, performativity, Joseph de Prémare, Shijing, structural rhetoric, Zhu Xi