Crafting a Collection bypasses the standard generic approach to the song lyric (ci) that traces the genre's maturation to the Song and instead delves into an exhaustive cultural and literary history of the Huajian ji, the earliest extant anthology and landmark of the genre. By discerning the interactions between the socio-political landscape and literary practices in the tenth-century Shu Kingdom, Shields effectively illustrates how a new style of ci came to fruition, achieving a remarkable balance between readability and scholarly detail in the process.

After the Introduction, the book is divided into two parts with three chapters each. Part I sets the cultural stage by examining developments of the song lyric in the late Tang (Chapter 1) and the Shu Kingdom (Chapter 2) and the anthologizing practices of the period (Chapter 3). Shields perceives the Huajian ji style as originating within the romantic literature of the late...

You do not currently have access to this content.