(Mis)remembering the Tang? The Attribution of the 'Twenty Four Categories of Poetry' to Sikong Tu

The attribution of the Ershisi shipin (‘Twenty Four Categories of Poetry'), a treatise on poetic styles written in the form of twenty four verses, has proved a very thorny issue. Long held to be the work of the late Tang poet Sikong Tu (839-908), it occupies a prime position in the traditionally-conceived arch of native Chinese poetics. In 1994, however, this attribution was put into question by Fudan University scholars Chen Shangjun and Wang Yonghao, triggering a lengthy and as yet unresolved debate: their supporters argue that the attribution to Sikong Tu probably became widespread only in the late Ming, and that the work itself was composed no earlier than the Southern Song, while their detractors insist on restoring Sikong Tu's claim to authorship. Regardless of the Shipin's ‘true' origins, the history of its attributions raises interesting questions about legitimacy and the value of antiquity for Chinese scholars. If it is true that Sikong Tu was widely accepted to be the Shipin's author only in the late Ming—as the textual record suggests—how might this attribution have come about? Whom might it have benefited? The answer to this lies perhaps in the fugu (‘return to antiquity') school of literary thought, a loose term referring to various literary thinkers in the mid- to late-Ming period whose poetic ideals dovetail neatly with those presented in the Shipin, and who were also influenced by Sikong Tu's other (undisputed) writings on poetry. In a time when fugu thought was highly influential, but also in competition with rival literary factions, it would have considerably bolstered fugu thinkers' position for the Shipin to be assigned to Sikong Tu, positioning him as a sort of progenitor from which their intellectual lineage might stem. Interestingly, a similar impulse can be observed in modern defenders of Sikong Tu's authorship. While outside observers might see the scale of the debate over the Shipin's authorship as disproportionate to its importance—after all, the text is still a significant achievement whatever the era of its composition—what is putatively at stake is the legitimacy of China's grand lineage of poetics, especially in the face of an ever-encroaching Western tradition of literary theory. Thus, issues of legitimacy and regard for antiquity are still very much alive.  

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