East Asian Studies Workshop: Prof. Meow Hui Goh, "Sound and Sight"

The East Asian Studies Workshop is very pleased to announce our major event in the Spring quarter. Professor Meow Hui Goh from Ohio State University will be giving a talk on her book Sound and Sight: Poetry and Courtier Culture in the Yongming Era (483-493) (Stanford University Press, 2010).

This is the first book to examine Chinese poetry and courtier culture using the concept of shengse 聲色 —sound and sight— which connotes "sensual pleasure." Under the moral and political imperative to avoid or even eliminate representations of sense perception, premodern Chinese commentators treated overt displays of artistry with great suspicion, and their influence is still alive in modern and contemporary constructions of literary and cultural history.

The Yongming poets, who openly extolled "sound and rhymes," have been deemed the main instigators of a poetic trend toward the sensual. Situating them within the court milieu of their day, Meow Hui Goh asks a simple question: What did shengse mean to the Yongming poets? By unraveling the aural and visual experiences encapsulated in their poems, she argues that their pursuit of "sound and sight" reveals a complex confluence of Buddhist influence, Confucian value, and new sociopolitical conditions. Her study challenges the old perception of the Yongming poets and the common practice of reading classical Chinese poems for semantic meaning only.

In the first half of this talk, Professor Goh will use a poem selected from her book to dissect the socio-political, religious, and literary elements that went into its making, so as to highlight the central thesis of her book: Yongming poetry is not the dry, technical exercise of “four tones and eight defects,” but the product of a new and highly perceptive poetics.

In the second half of this talk, she will introduce her current book project, which examines how the collapse of the Han central court became a memory figure in the literary works composed in its aftermath, functioning both affectively and discursively to bring about the first major “literature of chaos” in Chinese history.

Professor Goh’s talk will take place in Room 224 of the East Asia Library (Lathrop) from 12PM to 1:30PM on Friday, May 12. She will be introduced by Professor Ronald Egan, chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Dr. Regina Llamas, also from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, will act as our discussant. Each half of the talk will be followed by a brief Q&A session, and lunch will be served at the end.

Moreover, the East Asian Studies Workshop is offering the opportunity to purchase a copy of Sound and Sight at the subsidized price of $15. If you are interested in purchasing a copy at this price, please be sure to note your interest on the RSVP form below; those interested will be contacted by email with instructions on paying for and picking up their copies.