Qu Yuan's transformation from realized man to true poet: The Han-dynasty commentary of Wang Yi to the 'Lisao' and the 'Songs of Chu' (China, German text)

Ancient commentaries have often been conceived as sets of lexical explanations. Translators have neglected the commentators' agenda, their particular backgrounds, and the fact that consulting different commentaries as quarries for meanings lead to mixtures of different interpretations.; The Songs of Chu are a case in point. Various translations of the Lisao and other poems into Western languages, into modern Chinese or Japanese show that their translators relied on different commentaries. Consequently every translation's coherence rests on the translator's view regarding the correctness of particular earlier readings in relation to his own assumptions of what the text means. Attempts to either "recreate the Urtext" or to render the poems in a sense conceived in some past age in China are thus thwarted.; Based on the understanding that no existing translation of the Lisao succeeds in creating a reading of how the poem was understood at any time by Chinese readers, the Lisao is read entirely through the earliest existing commentary, the Sections and Sentence Commentary to the Songs of Chu (Chuci zhangju). Wang Yi's reading became the standard interpretation for more than a millennium, and, at least as a quarry, it has remained the most influential reading until today.; The poem and its commentary are approached from several directions: (1) The history of translation of the Lisao. (2) The history of interpretation of the Lisao prior to Wang Yi. (3) A complete translation of the Lisao through the commentary of Wang Yi. (4) An analysis of all components of the commentary. (5) An exploration of the exegetical operations and strategies within the Lisao commentary as in their relation to the introduction, the foreword, and the predecessors' understandings. (6) A comparison of the three different types of commentaries contained in the present anthology.; Following a critical history of Chuci translation, the dissertation presents the first rendering of the Lisao and some other poems in the understanding of the earliest commentators. It reconstructs the basis of Wang Yi's reading, demonstrates the complex nature of his commentary, gives reasons for its lasting influence, and shows that the anthology underwent at least one later redaction.