20世纪西方汉学界的《诗经》文化研究

Exploring cultural background of the Shijing is one of the most important issues in the Shijing scholarship. The present essay outlines the study of early Chinese culture in the Shijin by Western sinologists in the 20th century, including ritual-musical culture, material culture, and folk culture. Regarding the first one, Western sinologists accentuate the correspondence between the formal features of the Shijing and the ritual form and adopt the cross-cultural approach to the musical quality of the Shijing. As with the second one, the plants and the agricultural environment of central China described in the Shijing have been hotly debated. As for the third one, the folk customs and the ideas of sex represented in the Shijing have been long discussed. It's noteworthy that some American sinologists tend to accept Chinese scholar Wen Yiduo's interpretative principle rather than French scholar Marcel Granet's theory when elaborating on the folk culture in the Shijing.