雷之波
副研究員
研究領域: 漢唐文學，中國詩學
Email : raft at gate.sinica.edu.tw
My research interests include Chinese poetry, Chinese historiography, early medieval manuscripts, and the literature and culture of China from the Han to the Tang dynasties in general. I’ve also worked some on the history of the translation of Chinese poetry: a colleague and I have put together a finding list you might find helpful, at: https://chinesepoetrytranslation.org
My book, The Threshold: The Rhetoric of Historiography in Early Medieval China, is an effort to think through an old and important subject—the dynastic histories, on which we rely so greatly in our studies of premodern China—from a different perspective. That perspective is “rhetoric,” by which I mean looking at historical accounts as persuasive texts from top to bottom, from the cultural functions historiography performed, to the way histories came to be compiled, to the historical events themselves, as they were committed to writing and as they occurred. Have a look at the introduction!
Raft_Threshold_Introduction.pdf
Some questions I am currently working on:
• How did the Wenxuan, early medieval China’s great anthology, circulate in manuscript?
• What historiographical values are revealed in the Shishuo xinyu, early medieval China’s great anecdote collection?
• What characteristics and problems constitute the Chinese tradition of “rhetoric”?
• How did readers read poetry in early medieval China?
• What roles do the topoi of audience and communication play in Chinese literature?
• … and, translations of the fifth century poet Bao Zhao
If topics like these are of interest to you, please reach out—or pay me a visit when you’re in Taiwan….
- Zeb Raft, 2007, “Four Syllable Verse in Medieval China”, 538 pages, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University.
- Zeb Raft, 2010, “Sound and Sense: A Musical Look at Chinese Poetry in 1916”, TranscUlturAl, 1(3), 94-112.
- Zeb Raft, 2010, “The Beginning of Literati Poetry – Four Poems from First-century BCE China”, T'oung Pao, 1-3, 74-124.
- 雷之波, 2011, “《古詩紀》編纂背景一探——與 《古詩類苑》的關係”, 中國文哲研究通訊, 21(3), 213-233.
- Zeb Raft, 2012, “The Limits of Translation: Method in Arthur Waley's Translations from the Chinese”, Asia Major, 25(2), 79-128.
- Raft, Zeb, 2016, “Translation as a Means to the Discovery of Poetic Argumentation: An Experiment with the Tang Poet Liu Zhangqing”, Journal of Oriental Studies, 49(1), 73-108.
- Zeb Raft, 2019, “Two Words, and Two Kinds of Poetry, in the Work of Liu Zhangqing”, Archiv orientalni, 87(1), 99-142. (A&HCI, Scopus)
- Zeb Raft, 2020, “A New Approach to Biography in Early Medieval China: The Case of Zuo Si”, Bulletin of the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, 55(Sep. 2019), 41-81.
- Zeb Raft, 2018, “Audiences in the Shishuo xinyu”, paper presented at Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, 2018, Washington DC: AAS, 2018-03-25.
- Zeb Raft, 2018, “Editing and Publication in Fifth Century China: A Case Study”, paper presented at Annual Meeting of the European Society for Textual Scholarship, Prague: ESTS, 2018-11-25 ~ 2018-11-27.
- Zeb Raft, “‘Audience Design’ in Early Medieval Chinese Poetry: Four Poems by Cao Zhi (192-232)” 曹植的「聽眾設計」, Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, July 22, 2019.
- Zeb Raft, “Visual Rhetoric in a Commentary on the Wen xuan from Dunhuang”, the annual meeting of the American Oriental Society, Western Branch, Davis, CA, October 26, 2019.
- Zeb Raft, “‘Echoes’ in the Shishuo xinyu: Repetition and its Significance in Early Medieval China”, China Humanities Seminar, Harvard University, November 18, 2019.
- Zeb Raft, “Rhetoric and Historical Judgment in the History of the Liu-Song” 史識與史述：《宋書》史論的修辭探討, International Conference on Keywords in the Study of the Liu-Song, Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, December 15, 2020.
- Zeb Raft, “Reading ‘Traces’ in Medieval Manuscripts of the Wen xuan”, Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy book culture workshop (「書籍的一百種面貌文學與媒介：從寫本到數位」研習營), August 26, 2021.
- Zeb Raft, “Old Commentaries on Ruan Ji and the Reading of Poetry in Early Medieval China” 《文選》的〈詠懷詩〉舊注所展現的中古時期詩歌閱讀, Workshop on “Close Readings of Poetry and the Shijing” 詩與詩經文本細讀工作坊, Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy, Academia Sinica, December 2, 2021.
- Raft, Zeb, 2016, “Four Topics: A New Way of Thinking Through Chinese Poetry”, 中央研究院週報, 1243.
- Zeb Raft, 2015, “The Space of Separation: The Early Medieval Tradition of Four-Syllable ‘Presentation and Response’ Poetry”, editor(s): Antje Richter, A History of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture, pp. 276-306, Leiden: Brill.
- Zeb Raft, 2021, “Early Medieval Histories”, editor(s): Jack W. Chen, Anatoly Detwyler, Xiao Liu, Christopher M. B. Nugent, Bruce Rusk, Literary Information in China: A History, pp. 361-370, New York: Columbia University Press.