The Origins of Chinese Literary Hermeneutics

Explores how China's oldest poetry collection was interpreted in a Confucian exegetical text—the Mao Commentary —in the mid-second century BCE. The Shijing ("Canon of Odes") is China's oldest poetry collection, traditionally considered to have been edited by Confucius himself. Despite their enormous importance for Confucianism and Chinese civilization, the 305 odes have for millennia also puzzled readers. Why did the Sage include in the Canon apparently lewd poems about women promising men to "h