Rhetoric and the Discourses of Power in Court Culture

Key imperial and royal courts--in Han, Tang, and Song dynasty China; medieval and renaissance Europe; and Heian and Muromachi Japan--are examined in this comparative and interdisciplinary volume as loci of power and as entities that establish, influence, or counter the norms of a larger society. Contributions by twelve scholars are organized into sections on the rhetoric of persuasion, taste, communication, gender, and natural nobility. Writing from the perspectives of literature, history, and philosophy, the authors examine the use and purpose of rhetoric in their respective areas.In Rhetoric of Persuasion, we see that in both the third-century court of the last Han emperor and the fourteenth-century court of Edward II, rhetoric served to justify the deposition of a ruler and the establishment of a new regime. Rhetoric of Taste examines the court's influence on aesthetic values in China and Japan, specifically literary tastes in ninth-century China, the melding of literary and historical texts into a sort of national history in fifteenth-century Japan, and the embrace of literati painting innovations in twelfth-century China during a time when the literati themselves were out of favor. Rhetoric of Communication considers official communications to the throne in third-century China, the importance of secret communications in Charlemagne's court, and the implications of the use of classical Chinese in the Japanese court during the eighth and ninth centuries. Rhetoric of Gender offers the biography of a former Han emperor's favorite consort and studies the metaphorical possibilities of Tang palace plaints. Rhetoric of Natural Nobility focuses on Dante's efforts to confirm his nobility of soul as a poet, surmounting his non-noble ancestry, and the development of the texts that supported the political ideologies of the fifteenth-century Burgundian dukes Philip the Good and Charles the Bold.

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction by David R. KnechtgesPart I. Rhetoric of Persuasion1. The Rhetoric of Imperial Abdication and Accession in a Third-Century Chinese Court: The Case of Cao Pi's Accession as Emperor of the Wei Dynasty by David R. Knechtges2. The Court, Politics, and Rhetoric in England, 1310-1330 by Scott L. WaughPart II. Rhetoric of Taste3. Poems for the Emperor: Imperial Tastes in the Early Ninth Century by Pauline Wu4. Claiming the Past for the Present: Ichijo Kaneyoshi and Tales of Ise by Steven D. Carter5. The Emperor and the Ink Plum: Tracing a Lost Connection between Literati and Huizong's Court by Ronald EganPart III. Rhetoric of Communication6. Personal Crisis and Communication in the Life of Cao Zhi by Robert Joe Cutter7. Keeping Secrets in a Dark Age by Paul Edward Dutton8. The Politics of Classical Chinese in the Early Japanese Court by Robert BorgenPart IV. Rhetoric of Gender9. One Sight: The Han shu Biography of Lady Li by Stephen Owen10. Poetry of Palace Plaint of the Tang: Its Potential and Limitations by Kuo-ying WangPart V. Rhetoric of Natural Nobility11. Dante in God's Court: The Paradise at the End of the Road by Eugene Vance12. Practicing Nobility in Fifteenth-Century Burgundian Courtly Culture: Ideology and Politics by Arjo VanderjagtIndex