YiXuan Lian

Yuan Hong's Preface and Praise of Eminent Ministers of the Three Kingdoms, selected in the Anthology of Literature, provides a crucial perspective for examining the stylistic features of the praise genre during the Han-Wei-Jin period and the aesthetic norms of praise within the Anthology. By tracing the origins and evolutionary relationship between zan and song, this study proposes that their distinction lies not in form but in stylistic inheritance and the differing subjectivities of primary and subsidiary texts: the zan genre inherits the praise tradition, exhibiting characteristics of a subsidiary text, whereas the song genre possesses greater independence. Applying subtext theory to analyse Yuan Hong's Preface and Praise for Eminent Ministers of the Three Kingdoms reveals its extended preface-praise structure as a pinnacle of the genre's development. Functioning as a subtext, the preface theoretically constructs sovereign-minister relations and guides value judgements, delineating interpretative boundaries while emphasising core themes like ‘encountering a sovereign’ and ‘the times’. This integrates Yuan Hong's reflections on Eastern Jin politics. The aesthetic orientation of the ‘Zan’ genre in the Anthology of Literature exhibits three defining characteristics: prioritising character appraisal over miscellaneous praise, valuing parallelism and metrical precision over free-verse simplicity, and favouring works where emotion and rhetoric excel while eschewing empty flattery. This aesthetic selection both perpetuates the Han-Wei tradition of the ‘Zan’ genre and propels its transformation from utilitarian to aesthetic purposes, offering a crucial perspective for understanding the evolution of medieval literary concepts.

Wen Xuan; Praise genre; Preface and Praise of Eminent Ministers of the Three Kingdoms; Subtext theory; Yuan Hong

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