| The purpose of this dissertation is to inquire into the dialectics of "original" composition and "secondary" exposition manifested through the "text/commentary" division, a division posited by and formulated through the editors or commentators' rhetoric. This dissertation takes such exegetical rhetoric as a starting point and assesses its impact on the literary creativity, authorship, as well as historical and autobiographical understanding. In exploring the nature of such rhetoric, this study focuses on the image of "transmitter"---a scribe, an editor, a glossator, a historiographical compiler, or, an agent of textual and historical transmission---as presented by four genius writers: Dante, Jin Shengtan, Kong Shangren and Cao Xueqin (Zhiyan zhai). This study inquires: Why do these literary writers disclaim the authorship of their own writing while claiming to be the editor or glossator of their own construct? Can these writers define their construct through their text/commentary division (which is created by their rhetoric), or, can their role as a commentator indeed be separated or detached from their role as an author? In what sense does the dichotomy between original creation and secondary transmission elevate their authority as a genius author? Can their self-banishment to the order of secondary transmission help to promote their original creation, making it more "original?" To answer these questions, this dissertation is meant to conduct a series of case studies by presenting four distinct narratives of "self-reader's" image representation. These discrete narratives unfold around several common issues by which all chapters are interconnected: what is the implication of a writer's claim to be a scribe, editor or glossator of a pre-existing or received text; how an established exegetic paradigm can be used for a creative purpose; why a writer needs to present his image as a self-reader and how he presents the image of the reader of his own text; and, finally, how can an autobiography be written by glossing a received text, and why self-understanding can be deepened through historical engagement and understanding rather than allegory. |
