The ROW and the treatises of the ars dictaminis (AD) were written when their respective societies were undergoing great change. Both Song Dynasty China and twelfth-century Europe saw significant increases in prosperity. In turn, the various bureaucracies grew and there was thus an urgent demand for people who could write official and commercial documents. Education expanded dramatically and the AD was written to help students master the art of writing for their respective bureaucracies. It is our contention that the ROW was written to meet a similar need in China.
The principles of writing contained in both sets of texts are similar in some cases. The ROW stresses the importance of clarity, simplicity, succinctness and the use of contemporary understandable language. The AD treatises also underline the importance of brevity and simplicity. The narration or background section must be short (Lanham 115), and the petition only ask for that which is useful, necessary and honest (Faulhaber 98).
The AD treatises specify the set pattern, or schema for these letters, although, as we have seen, this order of the component parts is not fixed. There is less advice in the treatises on the way to sequence an argument per se. However, Faba has suggested that the normal sequence of exordium, narration, petitio can be seen as an enthymemic argument, with the exordium serving as the major premise, the narratio as the minor premise and the petitio as conclusion. Geoffrey of Vinsauf, writing at almost the same time as Chen Kui, points out that this order follows the sequence of placing the more general before the specific. This order, from general to specific, is also recommended by Gervase of Melkley, an Oxford grammar master writing at the beginning of the thirteenth century (Camargo). In the ROW, Chen Kui gives three possibilities for the sequence of an argument, of which two, the first and the third, encourage the sequence of general to specific. As was illustrated earlier, Chen Kui’s three models are: from main topic to supporting details; from supporting details to main topic; or a three part arrangement of main topic-supporting details-restatement of topic. We have earlier argued that Chen Kui’s promotion of this “main-frame” pattern suggests that the time at which he was writing was more open to ideas than was normal and that writers had less fear of retribution than normal. This is just one of many instances, therefore, where politics and power relations influence
rhetorical style in China, just as it did in Europe. The default and unmarked “frame-main” sequence comes into its own when the hierarchies are clearly established and the power of the superior instills fear in the person writing and persuading “up.”
The authors also stress the importance of context and content for the choice of style. Meaning takes precedence over form. By the same token, rules are for guidance and should not be followed slavishly. There are also similarities in the appeal to or use of authority. Faba’s Summa Dictaminis provides a list of one hundred and four biblical citations that may be useful for supporting the letter writer’s petition, for inclusion in the exordium section of the letter. There are, of course, significant differences in the use of authority as justification. Chen Kui’s examples are all from the Chinese Classics. Faba’s are all from the Bible. Murphy has argued that the eagerness to use the past for the needs of the present is a fundamental aspect of the Middle Ages (Murphy, “Rhetoric, Western European”). He cites Cicero’s influence in the development of the new genre of the ars dictaminis in support of this. There are also differences in the ways the Medieval Chinese and Europeans used the past for the needs of the present. In the context of Medieval Europe, Cicero was used as a rhetorical model for a way of speaking and writing, but not as an ideological model. In contrast, the ROW provides both rhetorical and ideological models. The ideologies, the dao, of the Chinese Classics were used to inform the present and their message needed to be phrased in a rhetorical style based on guwen, but in language which could be readily understood by contemporary audiences. The AD treatises are about ways of using traditional genres for a relatively new purpose.
Comparisons in the use of rhetorical tropes can also be drawn. A sample of thirteenth-century European student work recorded by Woods mirrors the use of repetition of specific words for stylistic effect, in much the same ways as advised by Chen Kui. Although this example does not come directly from an ars dictaminis treatise as such, it shows what students were being taught to practise in schools in thirteenth-century Europe. Two examples show the repetition of the words, “how” in the first, and “why” and “this” in the second.
How stupid, how insane, how wicked it is to vex the Gods, Why do you do this? Why do you affect this? Why do you believe that you can profit in this? (Woods 135).
Compare this with these extracts from the Analects, cited in The ROW 4/3. “Confucius also says, How wise and worthy is Yan Hui! He only has a bamboo basket for food and a gourd ladle for water. How wise and worthy is Yan Hui!”
Another example from the Analects of the rhetorical use of repetition is when Confucius praises Da Yu: “Confucius says, I have no complaint to make against Da Yu: his own table is simple, but the sacrificial offerings he prepares are abundant and he demonstrates sincere respect towards the gods. I have no complaint to make against Da Yu.”
Attention to complex stress patterns and rhymes is found in both Chen Kui and the AD treatises. One possible reason for this attention to stress and rhyme may be the lack of punctuation in traditional Chinese and Greek and Latin. This certainly explains the great attention to individual letters and syllables in Quintilian’s education system. For Quintilian, there was no short cut with syllables; they had to be learned thoroughly. The way Latin was read explains this. Before Jerome introduced the arrangement of text by sense units in the fourth century CE, the reader had to deconstruct the text. It is not until the ninth century that word separation and punctuation in manuscripts became widespread. Stress patterns and rhymes were thus vital clues in helping the reader deconstruct the text. In a comment that could apply as well to Classical Chinese, Lanham points out, “The lack of a fixed word order and the absence of word separation and punctuation in written texts made reading a matter of decoding, even for the experienced reader” (96).
We shall conclude this chapter on medieval China and Europe with an example from contemporary China (see also Kirkpatrick, “The Arrangement of Letters”). We have chosen to end this chapter in this way, as the arrangement in the exemplar Chinese letter of request bears a striking similarity to a Ciceronian or medieval European arrangement.
The example comes from a study conducted on letters of request written by Chinese living in the Mainland to the China Service of Radio Australia, based in Melbourne (Kirkpatrick, “Information Sequencing”). The China Service of Radio Australia broadcasts into China in Chinese and it naturally employs many native Chinese speaking staff. These letters were thus written by Chinese to Chinese. They were letters of request, but, as is clear from the example below, the requests were not onerous. However, the Chinese letter writers, almost all of whom were in their late teens or early twenties, would have considered that they were, in Gui Guzi’s terms, writing from below to above.
The great majority of these letters of request followed the same rhetorical structure and, as shall be illustrated below, this structure shows a quite remarkable similarity to the arrangement proposed by Cicero and then taught in the ars dictaminis manuals. The letter below was the one chosen by native speakers of Chinese as being the most appropriate model of the genre and this explains why it has been selected as a representative example here. We assign Ciceronian terms to the respective parts of the letter, and also include
in parentheses, the names Kirkpatrick gave to the parts of the schema in the 1991 analysis. It is worth underlining that this example was originally written by Chinese in Chinese and for Chinese in 1990, some nine hundred years after the treatise on letter writing, written for Medieval Europeans writing in Latin (Kirkpatrick “Arrangement” 256).
Salutatio (Salutation)
Respected Radio Australia producers.
Capatatio benovolentiae (Facework)
I have been a loyal listener to Radio Australia’s English teaching programmes and to “Songs You Like” for several years. I consider both programmes to be extremely well produced.
Narratio / Background (Reasons for Requests)
Let me describe myself a little: I am a middle school student, I am eighteen and my home is in—, a small border city. The cultural life really isn’t too bad. Because I like studying English, I therefore follow those programmes closely. But because the Central Broadcasting Station’s English programmes are rather abstruse, they are not really suitable for me and therefore I get all my practice in listening comprehension and dialogue from Radio Australia’s English programmes. This practice has been of great benefit. As I progress, step by step through the course, I am keenly aware that not having the teaching materials presents several difficulties.
Petitio (Requests)
Because of this, I have taken time to write this letter to you, in the hope that I can obtain a set of Radio Australia’s English programme’s teaching materials. Please let me know the cost of the materials.
In addition, I hope to obtain a radio Australia calendar. Wishing Radio Australia’s Mandarin programmes even more interest.
(Sign Off)
(Listener’s name and date)
As intimated above, what is particularly interesting here is that this Ciceronian / AD arrangement could not have been explicitly taught to these Chinese letter writers. Instead this style appears to develop naturally in contexts where hierarchy is important and the relative status of writer and reader has to be taken into account. As we shall show in the next chapters, this indirect “frame-main” style, in which the main point (i.e. the request itself) comes at the end of the letter and is prefaced by the reasons for it and some form of captatio benevolentiae, is the preferred or unmarked style in much Chinese rhetoric, involving as it does, speaking from below to above.
In the next chapter, we turn to a description and a discussion of perhaps the most iconic of all Chinese text structures, the baguwen, or the civil service exam essay.
This chapter provides a brief history of the Chinese civil service exam and then describes and critically discusses the most (in)famous essay structure associated with the exam, the baguwen. It concludes with an example and analysis of a contemporary baguwen. Despite its re-emergence in a modern form, we argue that this is unlikely to herald the re-emergence of baguwen as a popular Chinese text structure. While this chapter focuses on the civil service exam and the baguwen itself, the next chapter, Chapter 5, provides a historical account of the famous shuyuan or academies where students would be taught to compose baguwen, among other academic skills. Chapters 4 and 5 are therefore complementary.
The baguwen is defined in the DCR as being a regulated exam style of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing dynasties (1644-1911). While this is true, it hides what the baguwen came to represent in post-imperial China. The views of the following three scholars, expressed over a time period of some sixty years, can be taken as generally representative:
Because the function of the baguwen was to attain emolument and had ossified forms and rules, they therefore always comprised fawning and empty flattery. (Zhu Zicui 395) There is no question that the 8-legged essay holds no place whatsoever in China’s intellectual history except as a glaring example of demerit. (Chen Shou-yi 509)
The term baguwen has long been a byword for petrification in the world of letters: it stands nowadays for empty formalism, saying nothing at great length and with tiresome posturing. (Pollard 167)
There is some evidence, however, that attitudes towards this rhetorical form may be changing. After briefly reviewing the history and form of the baguwen,
we shall argue, using contemporary Chinese sources in support of our argument, that there is a call for the baguwen to be re-evaluated and to be classified as an important Chinese rhetorical style. The significance for Chinese of this shift in attitude for Chinese rhetoric will also be considered.