Abstract In the Qing Dynasty, textual criticism flourished, and phonological (pronunciation and rhythm) theory in Qing Literature was thriving. Poetic rhythm in Ci poetry was of cardinal importance in Ci scholarship during this period. During the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, Ci musicality had faded, and late-Ming and Qing Ci theorists tried to reconstruct the musical attributes in Ci and to use it to guide individual writing practice. Theorists such as Wan Shu and Ge Zai went through Ci poems from the Song Dynasty and summed up a set of rhythmic rules. With impetus from their work, Ci went from a “minor art” to a literary style that mobilized a variety of systems of knowledge. This elevated the status of Ci and facilitated it to evolve into a specialized area of study, increasingly elaborated in successive constructions of Ci writers. As the system of rhythmic rules in Ci developed, it became common practice to strictly use the rules of four tones when writing Ci. However, Ci theorists including Wan Shu often referred to the tones of Chinese opera and phonology, advocating levels of flexibility, such as “checked tone replacing level tone” and “falling-rising tone replacing level tone” and so on, to further refine their theories. Many examples they cited were influenced by the dialects, which though likely to have been over-interpreted, nevertheless created a doorway to future adaptation as Ci writing became more and more strict and rigid. Since it was extremely difficult to abide by four tones at all times, Ci writers often needed to use such rules as “checked tone replacing level tone” and “falling-rising tone replacing level tone” to rigidly conform to four tones. For this reason, though many Ci writers deemed it best “not to involve operatic rules” when writing Ci, they could not get rid of the influence of Chinese opera in poetic rhythm. In order to avoid the criticism of the readers, Ci writers often self-annotated their pronunciation when they used adapted rules. By doing so, they not only showed the conscientious conservation of four tones, but also achieved a level of freedom, which objectively became the manifestation of Ci turning academic. But of course, such scholarship was not integrated internally, and this led to clumsy writers changing tones willfully, countering the intention of elevating the status of Ci. In the end, the phenomenon of self-annotated pronunciation in the Ci of Qing Dynasty was the product of strictly abiding by the rules of four tones. In the face of complicated rhythmic rules, and in order to avoid criticism, some Ci writers strove to conform to the four tones as they appeared in famous Ci poems of Song Dynasty, which at first abided by the four tones only in epigrams, but gradually came to adopt four tones throughout entire works. Though such pursuits in poetic rhythm produced excellence for many Ci writers, it often conflicted with the writers’ natural instincts and prevented them from giving full play to their intelligence. Therefore, many Ci writers of the rhythm-abiding school made adaptations according to their predecessors’ work, promoting further exploration of poetic rhythm. It may well be said that the phenomenon of “self-annotated pronunciation” in the Ci of Qing Dynasty occurred in the process of specialization in the poetic rhythm of the Ci during the period. In this process, Ci writers made great efforts to keep a balance between “abiding by the rules” and “doing away with the style”, which reflected the Ci writers’ views on poetic rhythm and the style of the age. Only by achieving this delicate balance can we have a more comprehensive understanding of the specific structure and application of the poetic rhythm of the Ci in the Qing Dynasty, while the phenomenon of self-annotated pronunciation itself also provides a new perspective in the study of the poetic rhythm of Ci.
Zhao Wangwei,Shen Songqin. The Phenomenon of Self-annotated Pronunciation in the Ci Poems of Qing Dynasty: Gains and Losses in Poetic Rhythm Practice[J]. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 2022, 52(5): 72-84.
2022, Vol. 52 
