Talk by Prof. Lu Kou, Columbia University.
Monday, April 27, 2026
11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Powell Library 320
In eighth-century China, the Tang Dynasty stood as one of Eurasia’s most prosperous empires until the An Lushan rebellion broke out in the 750s, fracturing imperial authority and prompting the rise of provincial military governors. State officials were dispersed across the empire. They traveled on state business, accepted less desirable posts as local magistrates far from the capital, or sought patronage from regional military leaders. These poet-officials poignantly conveyed their
huanqing (“feelings as an official”) to friends and colleagues in their poetry, acutely aware of the force of bureaucracy that caused their displacement and a sense of self-worth inextricably tied to their status within the state bureaucracy. This talk examines the poems composed by the mid-ranked official Wei Yingwu (737–792) during his tenures as the local magistrate of Chuzhou, Jiangzhou, and Suzhou. While later critics often pair Wei Yingwu with Tao Qian (365–427) for their shared celebration of reclusion and detached serenity, this talk uncovers a more complex dimension of Wei’s poetic persona. By shedding light on the mediated visibility of the mid-to-lower bureaucracy and unnamed clerks in the poetry of Wei Yingwu, this talk discusses how Wei’s bureaucratic “middle-ness” generates nuanced representations of official work and ambivalent attitudes toward local entanglement.
Lu Kou is an Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University, specializing in medieval Chinese literature. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2018. His research interests include court culture, theories of rhetoric, historiography, bureaucracy and literature, and the global Middle Ages. He is currently completing his book manuscript titled
War of Words: Contesting Legitimation in Early Medieval China. Sponsor(s): Center for Chinese Studies