Lisa Indraccolo

Persuasion is one of the main rhetorical techniques employed in debates by early Chinese “wandering persuaders,” as it is attested by several examples preserved in Classical Chinese pre-imperial and early imperial politico-philosophical literature. The present article contributes to the study of persuasion by providing a detailed structural analysis of the one of the most famous texts that openly deals with this technique, Chapter 12 ‘Shuìnán’ 說難 (The Difficulties of Persuasion) of the composite “Masters text” Hán Fēizǐ 韓非子. Through such analysis, the article discloses the complex, multi-layered underlying rhetorical structure of the text, and the thick network of conceptual cross-references that are established among its different sections through the ingenious distributions of different kinds of text-structuring elements. As this case study will show, this type of analysis is an invaluable hermeneutic tool that provides a substantial contribution to a better and fuller understanding of Classical Chinese texts.

The present article explores the applicability of the term “rhetoric” in a non-Western context and, in particular, the legitimacy of such an attempt in the case of Early China, where the Warring States period is traditionally considered as the golden age of early Chinese “rhetoric”. The pre-imperial and early imperial received literature provides good evidence for the employment of a well-established and clearly defined set of argumentative techniques in everyday political practice in ancient China. No handbook on such techniques has been handed down, and a proper term to define them as part of a broader, more structured activity that could match Western “rhetoric” does not appear until the medieval period. The article argues, however, that by applying a more fluid concept of “rhetoric” and by extending its scope beyond and across cultural boundaries it is not only possible but also legitimate to a certain extent to talk about a rhetorical tradition in the case of ancient China as well.

The present article compares the two principal received editions of the Gongsun Longzi in the Daozang and the Shuofu collections. Exploring the considerable number of textual variants between these two editions, the analysis challenges the acknowledged status of the Daozang as the superior version. Instead, both the Daozang and the Shuofu editions are at times inferior or superior to one another.
Therefore, in the interpretation of the Gongsun Longzi both editions need to be
consulted in order to unravel certain obscure passages. Altogether, due to the generally high degree of coherence between the two editions, the understanding of the Gongsun Longzi is significantly affected by textual variants only in a limited number of cases. This further suggests that the Daozang and Shuofu editions donot represent two separate lines of transmission but rather two textual witnesses of
a common line.