ABSTRACT
For Chinese intellectuals, traditional and modem, Qu Yuan (338-278 BC) has been one of the most enduring symbols of moral rectitude and creative genius in the face of political oppression.
The remarkable posthumous career of the ancient poet-statesman has recently been described in Laurence Schneider's A Madman of Ch 'u: the Chinese Myth of Loyalty and Dissent} In this fascinating study, Schneider unravels the various layers and meanings of the Qu Yuan myth including its significance in the 20th century intellectual revolution. He ends with Qu Yuan in the 1970s firmly expropriated by the new historical orthodoxy of the Cultural Revolution which pictured the anti-Qin statesman of 2,300 years ago as just another defender of Legalist principles at that crucial juncture in ancient China when 'feudalism', the next stage in Marxist historiography, triumphed over 'slavery' and its Confucian defenders. There was a contemporary political moral behind this bizarre reinterpretation: the new stage of modem Chinese history, i.e., the 'new things of the Cultural Revolution', must prevail over conservative or restorationist forces, i.e., Confucius in ancient China, Zhou Enlai and his Party bureaucrats in the present.
