Paul Hsiang Lecture Series on Chinese Poetry

Sex, Ritual, and Virtue in the Book of Odes

The Book of Odes (Shijing 詩經) is the earliest surviving anthology of Chinese poetry, whose contents mostly date to the Zhou dynasty (1045–221 BCE), but it contains many works of interest to modern readers. In particular, many of the poems in the anthology are love songs, composed in both male and female voices, evoking visceral emotions such as jealousy, loneliness, anger, and longing. In premodern China the anthology was normally read in tandem with several traditional commentaries, which interpreted the poems of love and longing in terms of Confucian concepts of ritual and propriety. Modern scholars, however, have frequently criticized this tradition and asserted that these poems are simply innocent love songs without any moral import. Though this dispute may seem to be one of literary interpretation (hermeneutics), it is also grounded in moral and political assumptions that deserve scrutiny. After all, the Confucian commentators were not wrong to think that love and desire are matters of profound sociopolitical significance. Rather than choosing between straightforward love songs or moralizing allegory, the poems are engaged in both domains at once; they revolve around dynamic oppositions of sexual desire and sexual constraint, ritual propriety and ritual violation, innocence admired and innocence abused. Early commentaries, though erring on some details, remain a valuable guide to the way that these poems engage with multiple dimensions of ancient Chinese culture.