| This dissertation examines the nature of Wang Ji's poetic self-representation as a recluse within the context of the intellectual trends that attended the re-unification of the empire during the Sui-Tang era. A survey of this period in chapter 1 shows that the Sui and especially the early Tang court were relatively strong and stable centralized powers, and Wang Ji's contemporaries on the whole enthusiastically participated in the court-sanctioned codification and formalization of ritual codes and systems of knowledge in an effort to ensure the permanence of the empire. It is then argued that Wang Ji's poetry registers an objection to such efforts, not on political or moral grounds, but based on his philosophical conviction, derived from the texts of Laozi and Zhuangzi, of the inconstancy of the phenomenal world and the illusiveness of human knowledge. In an ever-changing and unknowable world, his poetry insists, no effort to perceive a thing rightly or fix a thing permanently can succeed.Wang Ji accomplishes this through the example of his multi-faceted and ever-changing self-representation as a recluse, who in fact manifests a diverse range of recluse-responses to a world ever in flux. Chapters 2-4 examine different dimensions of this persona: the recluse as philosopher, as country farmer, and as a drunkard. In each case, it is shown not only that this recluse-speaker exemplifies Wang Ji's conception of an ever-changing world, but he compels readers to experience with him the illusiveness of perceived reality. The most elaborate example of this occurs in Wang Ji's "You Beishan fu," the subject of chapter 5. Its speaker exhibits a series of perspective shifts and transformations of purpose that deny any confident apprehension of his character and world. |
