Textuality and Performance

Citations of Personal Literary Collections in Liu Xiaobiao’s Annotations to Shishuo Xinyu

Abstract

Shishuo xinyu is a collection of anecdotes about prominent historical figures of the Eastern Han, Wei, and Jin periods (ca. 3^rd–4^th centuries CE). Its contents are concerned with social discourse, and have often been analyzed in relation to the practice of character evaluation among the Wei-Jin elite. Several decades after its completion, Shishuo xinyu was expanded with a lengthy commentary by the Liang (502–557) scholar Liu Xiaobiao (462–521), in which Liu annotates the text with excerpts from nearly five hundred other works. This study focuses on the seventeen instances in which Liu cites the contents of the personal literary collections (bieji 別集) of individuals who appear as characters in Shishuo xinyu anecdotes, a sample of Liu’s annotations which highlights the role literary compositions play in Shishuo xinyu’s narratives of character evaluation. I argue that these annotations contribute to the base text an interest in the literary and material properties of written texts that is at times quite different from Shishuo xinyu’s interest in conversation and embodied performances. This pronounced interest in the textuality of social exchange and character evaluation not only changes the reader’s perspective on the base text, it also reflects literary and scholastic concerns specific to the manuscript culture of the Southern Dynasties period in which Liu Xiaobiao lived.

《世說新語》彙集了東漢至魏晉時期士人的軼事趣聞，並記錄了魏晉名士的言行風貌。在《世說》成書數十年後，梁朝學者劉孝標為其作註。劉註長期以來被學界視為中國中古時期目錄學的重要資料來源。本文通過分析劉註中十七次引用《世說》人物所撰的別集，探討這些文學作品如何擴展《世說》人物風評的敘事。研究表明，劉註對文本性和文學性註入了更強的關註，這與《世說》原文重在記錄人物言行的取向形成了對比。此外，劉註對人物風評別集的引用，不僅改變了讀者解讀《世說》原文的視角，還反映了在劉孝標所處的南朝手稿文化特有的文學和學術意涵。