Zhu Xi’s Poetic Hermeneutics and the Polemics of the “Licentious Poems”

The most controversial issue of Zhu Xi’s exegesis of the Book of Songs is his discussion of the “licentious poems” (yinshi). While rejecting the orthodox Han-Tang exegeses, Zhu Xi labeled dozens of poems in the “Airs of the States” (guofeng) as “poems of elopement and trysting.” ¹ This conclusion contradicted the established Confucian tenet that the Book of Songs contained “no evil in its thinking” ² and aroused heated debates in later centuries. Recently this issue has drawn much scholarly attention. Steven Van Zoeren, for example, has asserted that the Song Neo-Confucian hermeneutics of the Songs signifies a turning point in the tradition of classical studies in premodern China. According to Van Zoeren, Zhu Xi’s discovery of the “licentious poems” meant a “revolution” in the interpretation of the Songs and became foundational for much of modern scholarship on the Songs. ³ More recently, Achim Mittag has called Zhu Xi’s hermeneutics of the Songs a “Copernican Revolution” and has argued that his hermeneutics of the “Airs of the States” implies that the reader’s role is more important than that of the author. ⁴