《Manifest in Words, Written on Paper》的读后感大全

《Manifest in Words, Written on Paper》是一本由Christopher M. B. Nugent著作，Harvard University Asia Center出版的Hardcover图书，本书定价：USD 45.00，页数：360，特精心收集的读后感，希望对大家能有帮助。

《Manifest in Words, Written on Paper》读后感(一)：唐诗的物质文化史

原来只给了三星，现在改成四星。

我是在一堂历史课上读到这本书。读完之后，发现这不是一本历史学著作，作为唐诗研究，在史料上也显单薄，虽然作者在运用西方有关记忆、口头文学、文本批评的理论很有分寸感。

不过确实，作者也说了，他不研究唐诗内容本身，他讲的事唐诗的物质文化史。如果从这个角度来说，给四星还是合理的吧。

《Manifest in Words, Written on Paper》读后感(二)：思路略理

一、通過敦煌本《秦婦吟》各個鈔本的檢視對比，開始探討這些文本為什麼以及怎樣被創造出來。

．強調了文本的不穩定性（作者的缺失、鈔本的隨意改動等）

．遷移到佛道文本──as Dunhuang texts from Buddhist and Daoist traditions have shown ,religious texts from the medieval period were often as unstable as poetic ones.Christine Mollier has demonstrate that many Daoist works were copied directly from Buddhist sutras and that"the Buddhist showed no hesitation about trolling through Daoist collections and falsifying the writings the found there"(Buddhistand Daoist)──these works would be transposed into entirely different systems of religions and philosophical thought and practice.

二、記憶(memories)

．寫下的本子通常是根據記憶，而非背誦或者原本。在中古，記憶保留也改變了許多文本。（與歐洲中世紀不同，唐人在青少年之後就不會再有意訓練記憶；在競賽（arena）、創作中對記憶的精准亦無要求。）

．詩歌因其傳誦廣泛和韻律易為人所記，反過來也幫助詩歌保存和流傳，但不完美的記憶也導致了文本的不完美。（異文）

三、口頭創作和流傳（oral poetic production and circulation）

·口傳（orality）也是唐詩保存和傳播的關鍵之一。與西方之口傳與書寫傳播之間的聯繫不同，唐代基本上是兩條線索。

．In oral circulation, every instance of transmission is a new production of a poetic text. Case:Performance

四、書寫的文本

．文本的書寫是初唐詩歌創作（競賽、宴會）的主要形式。（289）

．媒介：自然和人造。

．市場流通：唐代的詩歌的商業化不若宋代，前期不若後期，後期的市場流通主要是行卷──士子買前期卷子冒名頂替；再如白居易元稹等人的詩時人多有仿作，以其日韓士人以為風尚，而歌妓所唱其詞亦自增身價，但宋受印刷文化的影響，其商業性質大增。

．穩定/不穩定：歷時性保存及以一傳千/Loss of control,instability--textual fluidity

＊按：流傳（Circulation）一節可玩。提到老問題，即流傳的媒介，船鞋之外，題壁等題──（樹、葉、寺、舊居）的媒介也是途徑，但題有二義，一是題在某處，而是以什麼為題，具體要看詩歌內容，需要明辨之。

五、別集、文集

．本章材料主要來自集子前面的序（preface ）。

．與宋代文集的序對比，可看出唐代的文學作品並非商品，

．異文少──一因非印刷，二因蒐集到的版本有限。因此準確性和原本的概念（the idea of original version）在唐代並不那麼重要。

．宋人更多的抱著學術或者商業之出發點，在唐代是審美性的（aesthetic），而極少談論日常(quotidian)和物質的話題（material issues）。（按：這一點很值得注意）

．關於總集（multi﹣author anthology ），在編纂之前，集中的作品可能已為收集者所見或所有。

總結：

按：研究中晚唐以及元白者此書尤其可參考。

．後來者的“修正”──可能導致詩歌理解（different perception）的不同──如秦婦吟。

．對於一個事件不同以不同語言描述出來的，乃是不同的詩歌；而杜甫詩中的某些字的確定乃是後來的歌妓為在傳唱時為更好的取悅客人選定的。

．另一種作品和作者的分離和混淆乃是出於行卷。

．以禪作比談產生和流傳：initial tranｓｃｒｉｐｔion﹣circulation、evaluation、selection﹣editorial modification，with oral writing transmission and reputation of a given master and the popularity of dialogues involved him.

*medieval writing does not produce variants,it is variance.(Cerquiglini)

《Manifest in Words, Written on Paper》读后感(三)：A few words about the first chapter, "Qinfu yin"

The first chapter of Nugent’s book convincingly reverses a conviction that has guided modern scholarship of Tang poetry in China since it started out in the early 20th century. This conviction holds that a version of a Tang poem that dated from an earlier period is of more value than the one produced in later times, because the earlier a version is, the closer it is to the original text produced by the author. By examining the circulation of poetic manuｓｃｒｉｐｔs in the Tang Dynasty, however, Nugent argues that, at that time, there existed no such a critical version of a poem. Once a poem entered into circulation, editors, anthologists, scribes and readers all made changes to the copies without the intention of preserving authenticity, a notion that was invented in later times. Nugent’s study reveals a whole new picture of the medieval Chinese poetic world. It makes scholars reexamine the basic concepts about authors, texts and readers, and rethink the traditional approach to medieval Chinese literary history.

Nugent’s strategy is to return to the ancient manuｓｃｒｉｐｔs, known as the Dunhuang manuｓｃｒｉｐｔs that were produced in the Tang and survived till now. Among those sources he focuses on a famous narrative poem, “Qinfu yin”(“The Lament of the Lady of Qin”), and compares its fifteen existing manuｓｃｒｉｐｔs in two ways, which constitutes the major part of this chapter. One is the variation in the form of the manuｓｃｒｉｐｔs, such as different sizes of different manuｓｃｒｉｐｔs, the layout of the characters, the quality of the writing, and the binding forms they take. Through this detailed comparison, the author reveals that different copies met different demands. For instance, although both originated from the same poem, the quality of a child’s calligraphy practice must be different from that of a text for a scholar’s leisure reading.

The other way is to compare the textual variants among the manuｓｃｒｉｐｔs. All the variants are classified into eight categories, such as variants that are graphically similar and variants that have semantic similarity. Such meticulous, sometimes even painful, analysis enables us to see how greatly the texts differ from one another and how abundant the information in those seemingly meaningless variants is. Nugent reveals that it was a custom in the Tang that poetry copiers modified the original texts wherever they were dissatisfied with the words. Moreover, poetry was mainly transmitted orally by memory instead of by written text.

These texts have in fact long been the objects of literary scholarship. Various copies of a poem have been collected, compared, and collated by scholars whose final goal is to recreate a critical text free of typo errors and closest to the original text. Nevertheless, Nugent shows that such a flawless text never existed in history, nor is supported by any evidence of being close to the author, but is only a text meeting today’s expectations of what a book should be like.

Despite a study on specific issues, Nugent’s study is a major contribution to our understanding about the relationships among authors, texts and readers in the Tang. He shows that the Tang poems we have today are the co-production of genius poets and numerous anonymous readers who may be anyone from creative writers to illiterate soldiers. The dichotomy between the author and the reader that we have today was not the case in the Tang. In this pre-printing era, the real author lost control over his poem once it was completed, and the readers participated in the second phase of composing, which produced various versions of the poem. Each version was unique but all contributed to our knowledge about this era’s literature.

I believe, after the publication of Nugent’s study, it is time for scholars in the field of Tang poetry to reconsider their approaches. Dominated by the modern concepts of author and reader, we used to put huge effort into retrieving the original texts, analyzing the choices of words to determine the authorship, and summarizing an author’s style through close reading. Yet the bases of these studies have all been proved tenuous. From my point of view, perhaps our focus on the authors and the critical texts should be shifted to readers and how readers engaged in the production of the literary treasures. Perhaps from now on, before returning to the great figures in literary history, we need to first explore the social context of the literary world, in order to see the large gap between the past and present and see how our entrenched knowledge has been formed in a way we neglected before.

Nugent’s work opens a new world for future research. Yet it serves as not so much a solution to traditional issues as a catalyst for more complicated questions. New questions spring up; once the connection between the text and the author is sabotaged, how can we describe, appreciate, and place those great figures in history？ if the text is unstable, where does close reading lead us？ and how can we distinguish the value of literary study from that of historical research？ These essential issues are, of course, not the task of Nugent’s article, yet it is worth bearing them in mind when we embark on further study.