Quan Tangshi
The Quan Tangshi (Complete Tang Poems) is the most complete collection of Tang dynasty (618–907 CE) and Five Dynasties (907–960 CE) verse. It consists of 900 fascicles, with 48,900 works by more than 2,200 writers.
The compilation of the Quan Tangshi was ordered by Emperor Kangxi (reigned 1661–1722) of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). Pang Dingqiu was appointed editor-in-chief, and Cao Yin (1658–1712) was in charge of organizing and publishing the project, which began in the spring of 1705 and was completed in the autumn of 1706. The relative completeness of the Quan Tangshi was the result of its incorporation of the efforts of a long lineage of previous collectors. Its basic framework was drawn from a compilation by Ji Zhenyi (b. 1630) under the same title; this, in turn, was based on a collection by Qian Qianyi (1582–1664), who himself had drawn heavily from Wu Guan's (c. 1571) Tangshi ji (Records of Tang Poetry), itself an expanded version of Ji Yougong's (flourished 1121–1161) Tang-shi jishi (Events of Tang Poetry). Furthermore, the Quan Tangshi absorbed all 1,033 fascicles of poems in Hu Zhenheng's (1569–1644/45) Tangyin tongqian (Comprehensive Booktags of Tang Sounds). The works appearing in the Quan Tangshi are divided according to a fourfold periodization of Tang poetry into "Early," "High," "Mid," and "Late" periods, a schema first suggested by Yan Yu (c. 1230) in his Canglang shihua (Canglang Remarks on Poetry), which, though problematic, has long been followed in anthologies and in scholarship on the subject. Writers are arranged according to year of birth or, if that is unknown, the year in which they passed the jinshi (presented scholar) examination. Short biographical sketches appear at the head of each writer's collected poems.
The Quan Tangshi has been criticized for certain shortcomings. First, it is, in fact, far from complete. Tang poems discovered in the Dunhuang caves at the turn of the twentieth century were, of course, unknown to its editors; certain poems and fragments quoted in other sources were overlooked as well. Another recurrent problem arises from the abundance of incorrect or overlapping attributions, and other works are out of sequence. Finally, no source references are given.
In the pursuit of a truly complete collection of Tang poetry, studies on commentary, supplements, collation, and other critical issues concerning the Quan Tangshi have been published. These works will eventually contribute to the updated version of the Quan Tangshi now being compiled.
Further Reading
Kroll, Paul W. (1986) "Ch'uan T'ang-shih." In The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, edited by William H. Nienhauser. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 364–365.
Spence, Jonathan. (1966) Ts'ao Yin and the K'ang-hsi Emperor: Bondservant and Master. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 157–165.
Yu Dagang. (1937) "Ji Tangyin tongqian." Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology 7, 3: 355–384.
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