Poetry and Access to Power in the Court of Empress Wu Zetian (624–705)

This article considers the reign of Empress Wu Zetian (r. 690–705) in its special relation to poetry. It suggests that Empress Wu’s importance in Chinese literary history can be observed in two ways: on the one hand, her reign was responsible for a remarkable flowering of court culture, as she directly and powerfully intervened in the contemporary literary scene, which in more than one way led to the golden age of Chinese poetry in the eighth century; on the other hand, her rule paradoxically marked the beginning of the end of court literature as a force to be reckoned with in the larger cultural sphere. This article argues that the rule of Empress Wu is characterized by access: her access to information
throughout the empire and the access to her person and to power. When the hope for access was kindled and then frustrated, it led to the creation of a poetry of discontent and a new cultural community with new values, with judgment not made by a single figure of authority but by consensus of that community. This community changed court culture and court literature, and Empress Wu’s reign played a central role in this
process.

本文探討武則天時代與詩歌的特殊關係，提出武則天在中國文學史上的重要性
可以從兩個方面進行觀察：她的統治導致了宮廷文化令人矚目的繁榮，而她直接和主動地參涉並影響當時的文學景貌，以種種不同方式帶來了八世紀也即盛唐時期中國詩歌的黃金時代；但與此同時，武則天時代也標志了宮廷文學衰落的開始，自此之後，宮廷文化，特別是宮廷詩歌，在帝國更廣大的文化場域中不再占據主導地位。本文認爲武后的統治以進接(access) 為其主要特徵：這既包括武后本人對整個帝國各種信息的進接，也包括帝國臣民對權力的進接及其與武后本人的直面接觸。進接希望的點燃和破滅導致了一種新型怨憤詩歌的誕生和一個新文化社區的興起。這個新社區不服從一個單一的權威，卻服膺于社區的共識，從而改變了宮廷文化和宮廷文學。武則天的統治在這一過程中扮演了重要的角色。