Unfortunately and due to unforeseen circumstances, this event has been cancelled.

The phrase dui yang 對揚 (roughly, “responsively exalt”) is a ubiquitous formula in Zhou bronze inscriptions, evoking a symbiotic interaction between virtuous minister and sage ruler whereby ritually or verbally efficacious response from the former enhances the might and reputation of the latter. The medieval empires of the Northern and Southern Dynasties and Tang, a millennium and a half or so later, were naturally utterly different in nature, structure, and complexity from the old Bronze-age kingdoms recorded and mythologized in the classics, but they nonetheless operated under a sort of contractual obligation to represent their own functioning as a continuation or restoration of those mythic sagely kingdoms. This talk, centering on medieval traditions of court speech and related aspects of examination and educational culture, explores the processes of historical “translation” through which medieval rulers and their ministers strove to carry on this responsive and exaltative function as they understood it.

Robert Ashmore is Associate Professor of Chinese in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Berkeley. His main research interests lie in the literary and scholarly traditions of early medieval to Tang and Song China, with particular focus on questions of music and performance, hermeneutical thought, and commentarial practice.

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