Reading Tao Yuanming: Shifting paradigms of historical reception (427-1900)

This book begins with the death of Tao Yuanming (also known as Tao Qian, 365?-427), who has come over time to be considered one of China's greatest poets.¹ Over the centuries, portrayals of his life-some focusing on his eccentricity, aloofness, and winebibbing, others on his exemplary moral virtue-would elevate him to iconic status. Recent studies on canon formation have indicated that it is common for a writer to achieve his reputation as we know it many generations after his death, and that changes in his reception often have less to do with the works themselves than with changes in the motivations and needs of anthologists and critics of different periods.² The reception of Tao Yuanming is an illuminating case in point. Largely dismissed as a poet in the first few centuries following his death, Tao would seem to have been the object of a miraculous recovery unless we identify turning points and crucial figures in the construction of his historical image. This book is an examination of the processes behind the making of a model poet and cultural icon.