The Book of Poetry: The Han Canonization - Romeo and Juliet-like Rendezvous

This episode features a poem that enacts, through incremental repetition, the unfolding drama of a young woman being torn by longing, hesitancy, love, and fear while a suitor is crushing all physical barriers to have a tryst with her. To sanitize this poem, Han commentators resorted to an allegorizing strategy called “cutting off a section to create a new meaning,” constructing a political allegory on the thinnest of evidence. Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign