Product details
- ISBN 9781032738789
- Weight: 460g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 24 Sep 2025
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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This book is the first comprehensive study of the twelve New Music Bureau poems by the influential poet-official Yuan Zhen 元稹 (779–831) in comparison with the response poems of Bai Juyi 白居易 (772–846). Its new perspective on music and ritual reveals connections between Yuan’s poems that otherwise appear to have no logical relation. While Bai’s poems are celebrated for their simple and direct style, those by Yuan are criticized for being abstruse and overloaded with historical and literary allusions. This study uncovers the inner mechanism of Yuan’s poems, his role in both the revival of Confucianism and the so-called “New Music Bureau Movement” in the Mid-Tang, his vision of the significance of music and ritual in securing lasting order after decades of military conflict and political upheaval, and his innovative use of New Music Bureau poetry as memorial.
Mei Ah Tan, Ph.D. (2008), University of Wisconsin, Madison, is Professor of Chinese, Programme Director of the Master of Arts in Chinese, and Associate Director of The Tin Ka Ping Institute for Chinese Language and Culture at The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong. Her research is multidisciplinary, exploring the intersection of linguistics, literature, and history. She has published on classical Chinese language and literature. Her work includes articles on Yuan Zhen and Han Yu and A Dictionary of High Frequency Function Words in Literary Chinese (Routledge, 2023).
