Mediating between Loss and Order: Reflections on the Paratexts of the Tsinghua Manuscripts

Q2 Arts and Humanities
Yunxiao Xiao
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract This study, emphasizing recently discovered bamboo manuscripts as both cultural documents and material objects, investigates the active and autonomous roles played by the scribes of the Tsinghua manuscript collection. Because pre-imperial textual culture has been presented as having tremendous orthographic flexibility and textual fluidly, the codicological and paratextual properties – titles, slip numbers, punctuation marks, verso lines, etc. – have often been considered as being applied without any overarching rules. Yet despite the difficulty of finding any consistent pattern of material design throughout the entirety of pre-imperial manuscripts, within the Tsinghua University collection, I have found not absolute, yet clear overlaps among the codicological and paratextual designs and the classifications of scribal hands. These overlaps indicate that titles, slip numbers, and punctuation marks were deeply associated with the scribes or producers rather than with the readers or users. Most of the punctuation marks should be viewed as a regulation or instruction for the text’s correctness rather than some readers’ understanding or interpretation. Altogether, these purposeful, pragmatic, and surprisingly advanced paratextual devices resonate with the producers’ deepening concerns about textual loss, and show local and even individual efforts and methods to organize and stabilize the ever-changing textual lore.
失落与秩序的调和:对《清华手稿》文本的反思
摘要本研究以新发现的竹编手抄本作为文化文献和实物,考察了清华手抄本书记员在手抄本收藏中所扮演的主动和自主的角色。由于帝制前的文字文化被认为具有巨大的正字法灵活性和文本流畅性,典故学和准文本性质-标题,编号,标点符号,对行等-通常被认为没有任何总体规则。然而,尽管很难在清华大学的藏品中找到任何一致的材料设计模式,但我发现在法典和准文本设计以及抄写手分类之间并不是绝对的,但明确的重叠。这些重叠表明,标题、纸条号和标点符号与抄写员或生产者密切相关,而与读者或用户无关。大多数标点符号应被视为对文本正确性的规定或指示,而不是一些读者的理解或解释。总之,这些有目的的、实用的、令人惊讶的先进的副文本装置与生产者对文本丢失的日益加深的关注产生了共鸣,并展示了地方甚至个人为组织和稳定不断变化的文本爱所做的努力和方法。
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来源期刊
Bamboo and Silk
Bamboo and Silk ASIAN STUDIES-
CiteScore
0.10
自引率
0.00%
发文量
13
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