[Dissertation] The Fallible Body in Early Medieval China

Author: 
Li, Xiaoxuan

Degree date: 
2020

School:
Harvard University

Abstract:
This dissertation examines one of the most important assumptions inherited by early medieval China: that the physical body functions as a valid and readable source of knowledge about individuals and the world they inhabit. It considers the continuity and evolution of this assumption during the period of the Six Dynasties (3rd - 6th centuries CE), and argues that it is contested across various genres of textual representation. I identify the emergence of a “fallible” body in three clusters of texts. First, I discuss how the late third century idea of “knowing others” (zhiren 知人) diverges from an earlier physiognomic tradition, and I interpret several rhapsodies (fu 賦) in the context of this zhiren paradigm. I explain their choice of rhetorical strategies, most centrally the conceit of a ventriloquized body part, as rooted in a challenge against the regime of interpreting one’s physical appearance for ability and status. Second, I examine the relationship between representations of the female body and knowledge of interior subjectivity in the rhapsody tradition from the Han (206 BCE-220 CE) through the Liang (502-557 CE), and locate in the shi (詩) poetry of the fifth and sixth centuries a new interest in the disjunction between the inherited literary discourse of this relationship and its basis in economic and social realities. Lastly, I discuss the motif of the anomalous body in zhiguai (志怪) collections, and through a comparison between Buddhist apologetic sources with more heterogenous compilations, show how certain tales question the status of bodily markings as evidence for both narrative and moral resolution.