The first East Asian Studies Speaker Colloquium event of the year will be taking place Wed., Oct. 6, at 5:00pm via Zoom. Dr. Michael Hunter of Yale University will be discussing his new book, The Poetics of Early Chinese Thought (Columbia, 2021). This is a public talk. Please see the attached flyer for further details.
Talk Title: The Classic of Poetry at the Foundations of Classical Chinese Philosophy
Abstract: The standard narrative of ancient Chinese thought for the last hundred years or so has one very big blindspot: poetry, and especially the Classic of Poetry (Shijing 詩經), which was by far the most widely known and influential corpus of the Warring States period. Drawing on material from his recently published book (The Poetics of Early Chinese Thought: How the Shijing Shaped the Chinese Philosophical Tradition; Columbia UP), Prof. Hunter will present his reading of the ideology of the Classic of Poetry and show how that ideology reverberates throughout the early textual record.
Bio: Prof. Hunter is an associate professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University. His first book, entitled Confucius Beyond the Analects, argues that extant Confucius material from the early period is much bigger, more dynamic, and more interesting than what the early imperial Analects suggests.
