Pursuing Moral Governance

A millennium ago in Northern Song (960–1127) China, Emperor Huizong initiated the “Eight Virtues of Conduct” in order to recruit morally upright officials. In place of the candidates’ skills in literary composition and understanding of the Confucian classics, this scheme adopted candidates’ moral virtues as their major criterion of selection. This paper analyzes how this scheme was implemented. It also shows that the rejection of certain genuinely virtuous nominees and the recruitment of some candidates who had exhibited objectionable conduct somehow compromised the emperor’s ideal. This analysis is followed by a discussion of the political and social implications of the scheme. Instead of perceiving this promotion channel as a means for Huizong and Chief Councilor Cai Jing to eliminate dissidents and install ideological conformity, the author argues that the scheme was an initiative of the emperor to counter the chief councilor’s dominance and alleviate factional conflicts. The final section examines the extent to which this scheme facilitated social mobility in the Song dynasty.     

Medbh McGuckian's source texts and the challenge to authorial identity in “The Good Wife Taught her Daughter”

This article contends that Medbh McGuckian's “The Good Wife Taught her Daughter”, from her 2006 volume The Currach Requires No Harbours, offers an example of the poet's direct engagement with and rejection of negative commentary regarding her opaque style and incorporation of material from source texts. This article first presents a contextualising overview of the main strands of criticism of McGuckian's work. Following this, two detailed readings of this poem are offered. The first of these readings foregrounds McGuckian's challenge to the possibility of stable meaning in any linguistic act. The second reading identifies McGuckian's source texts and examines how their content and nature underline her deliberate destabilisation of identity and meaning.     

Nomadic,ecstatic, magic: Arctic primitivism in Scandinavia around 1900

The aim of this article is to delineate the term “Arctic primitivism” in an aesthetic context and, by means of three examples from Scandinavian artists whose works were also the subject of ethnological discussions, to give an illuminating impression of Scandinavian Arctic primitivism around 1900. First some conceptual considerations about the combination of Arctic and primitivistic discourse will be presented. Then three examples for the “primal conditions” of an aesthetic conception of Arctic primitivism will be discussed: the nomadic, the ecstatic, and the magical. They serve as counter principles to modern categories such as spatial fixedness, linear chronology, and rational thought. Emilie Demant Hatt’s visual art stands for the nomadic principle; the Swedish cartoonist Ossian Elgström deals with ecstatic states; and the poems of Danish “eskimologist” William Thalbitzer show his fascination with indigenous magical incantations as an alternative to rational thought. All examples illustrate the artists’ interest in an authentic and uncorrupted culture, which they reflect on with awareness of inauthenticity and second-hand acquisition. The effects of duplication, simultaneity, and secundarity arising from the three principles drive a reflective discourse on media through which awareness of the crisis of modernity is sublimated, revealed, or made the subject of artistic exploration.     

The technologies of distance: new migrations in Conor O’Callaghan’s The Sun King

This article analyses Conor O’Callaghan’s collection The Sun King as an expression of contemporary migration practices. It places the poet’s technological mobilities within larger global movements and argues that the collection reconfigures poetic versions of migration for the twenty-first century. The Sun King (2013) is located in explicitly transient spaces, while its formal innovations serve to mimeticise contemporary dislocation. In reinventing the dual demands of memory and migration in the postmodern society, The Sun King recognises and pursues alternative poetic possibilities. The article suggests that O’Callaghan’s Twitter-poem “The Pearl Works” can be read as indicative of an expansive impulse towards ephemeral online works. In particular, the article raises questions around composition, stability and memory practices in the digital era, and highlights how both migration and memory are complicated by technological innovations.     

Exploring Poetry with Cognitive Neuroscience: T.S. Eliot's ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’

Research that involves both neuroscience and art often attempts to explain the aesthetic experience of ‘beauty’ in visual art, and to define the function of art in neural terms; less has been written concerning the neural correlates of poetry reading. It is suggested that there are existing areas of study in neuroscience that may help elucidate how we enjoy literature beyond pure neuroaesthetics, such as research in creative problem-solving, knowledge-based pleasure, and music. This essay endeavours to bring together insights from both neuroscience and literature to shed light on how and why we take pleasure in interpreting T.S. Eliot's ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. It is proposed that the pleasures of reading ‘Prufrock’ are ultimately associated with the ways in which the reader's expectations are confirmed or challenged. While the conclusions of this paper are intentionally constrained to a single poem, they are potentially generalisable.     

宋朝的配隶法与厢军中的配军

宋朝的配军制度,是建立在配隶法基础上的强制罪犯充军的集兵制度,是宋代兵制中于募兵制之外又一个值得注意的特点。配隶法自宋初实行以后,逐步成为一个内容繁杂、适用于各种犯罪的刑种。两宋时期的厢军是配军数量较多的军种,配军不仅集中分布在厢军的牢城营,而且在厢军其他重役军分和一般军分中都有较多分布。由于配隶法适用范围的泛化和枉法滥配现象的大量存在,宋朝牢城等配军军分的溢额成为一种常态,配军数量十分庞大。宋统治者之所以将罪犯配隶充军,很大程度上是为了直接控制一批能够服兵役和劳役、随时听候国家调遣的人力资源,配军的存在也因此具有了其自身的社会经济价值和军事价值。     

宋初和平统一战略及实践

在和平建国及收兵权的基础上,宋初统一战略中,和平统一的设想前所未有地突显出来,在战略中广泛实施,并在一些地方大获成功。出现了在武力威胁下不战而降的荆南模式;没有直接的军事威胁,但朝廷做出过明确的归顺要求,最终主动归顺的吴越模式;既没有任何军事威胁,朝廷甚至也没有做出明确的或暗示的归顺要求,自觉纳土的漳泉模式。宋政府英明的统一战略和高超的政治手段,为国家的统一和历史的发展做出了重要的贡献,在分裂时期提供了和平统一的可行性,值得充分肯定。     

宋代功臣配享述论

功臣配享是古代帝王对有功之臣的最高酬劳,也是激励其他臣僚、引导政治舆论的重要方式。宋代在继承前代制度的基础上,形成了具有自身特点的配享之制。在配享功臣的选择上,宋代君臣本着尊崇宗庙和激励后继大臣的原则,采取了慎重的态度,并依据了较为严格的标准。功臣配享与宋代政治关系密切,它反映了当朝君臣的政治态度,是当权政治集团利益和要求的直接体现。     

水东宋氏职衔考

水东宋氏从唐初至明末统治贵州水东地区,唐宋元明四朝先后封赐诸多官衔。通过对水宋氏所任职衔的研究,可充分认识其兴起、发展、兴盛和衰亡过程,也可窥见中央王朝的治黔方略及贵阳政区的形成过程。     

唐宋西南、岭南瘴病地理与知识阶层的认识应对

唐宋时期瘴气、瘴病主要分布于西南山区,瘴病主要分布于四川南部泸、黎、戎州一线、长江三峡地区、云贵高原及岭南广西盆地,瘿病主要分布于秦巴山区、川西北山区及长江三峡一带。本文通过对大量历史文献的考察认为,唐宋时期知识阶层经历了对以瘴病为主的地方性疾病由盲目恐惧悲观到不懈地探索及医学应对转变过程,其中对瘴气的地理学认识、瘴病的预防及辩证治疗最有成就,从一个侧面加深了对西南、岭南地区地理复杂性的了解。更为重要的是在对付瘴病方面士人积极进行移风易俗运动,从根本上倡导文明进步的应对观念行为,不仅对西南、岭南疾病地理有了较为科学的认识,而且在应对以瘴为主的环境疾病,推动西南、岭南地区社会文明进步方面产生了深远影响。