The Shaping of the Book of Songs

The present work is a study on the formation of the Shih-ching. The author poses the hypothesis that this collection of poems, as the standard music and literature passed down to later generations, initially incorporated different cultural heritages through a process which moved from ritualization to secularization, as well as standardization to localization.
In aiming to find the origins of the division of the Shih-ching into sections and subsections and their titles, as "Nan," "Feng," "Ya," and "Sung," the author employs an interdisciplinary methodology, combining ethno-musicological methods with paleography, philology, and archaeology. He draws on new archaeological data of the past two decades that has shed new light on the Shih-ching.

Chen Zhi

Chapter I The State of the Field and the Methodological Concern Chapter II Yung -, Sung - and Sunng -: Sacrificial Musical Works Performed in the Shang House Chapter III The Standardization of the Ya Music Chapter IV A Paleographic Analysis of Nan and Its Significance for Interpreting the Meaning of the "Nan" Section of the Book of Songs Chapter V The Localization of the Conception of Ya: The Revival of Shang Musical Elegance Chapter VI Towards a Conclusion Bibliography