Abstract
This article discusses a previously unnoticed figural technique found in several poems and series in the Chuci 楚辭, one of the earliest poetry anthologies from ancient China. In these poems, images that appear in one sense reappear later on in a strikingly different meaning. In some of these poems and series, the effect may be merely coincidental, the result of poets or performers working with limited repertoires of tropes that therefore return in different ways. Elsewhere, however, the technique becomes regular and purposeful, part of a metatextual reflection upon the poems’ own use of figures and images. By examining the poems and series that employ it, we can begin to to trace the contours of a heretofore unwritten early history of literary theorization in China.
Keywords
Chuci, early Chinese literary theory, figurative language
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