THE BIOGRAPHY OF BAO SI, THE SPOUSE OF THE KING YOU OF ZHOU, IN THE CONTEXT OF NIEBIZHUAN, A PART OF LIENUZHUAN BY LIU XIANG
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St Petersburg State University
Abstract
In the article there is a study of the biography of Bao Si 褒姒, King You of Zhou’s 周幽
王 second wife, in the context of Niebizhuan 孽嬖傳, — the volume of biographical corpus
Lienüzhuan 列女傳 by the Han scholar and litterateur Liu Xiang 劉向. The author set
himself the task of identifying phrases that characterise Bao Si, comparing them with
records about other depraved favourites, and finding out which female images of Niebizhuan
are closest to the image of Bao Si and which biographies are the most textually close to the biographical note about her. A comparative analysis revealed that among
the biographies of “favourites bearing calamities”, the note about Bao Si is the only
one containing a fantastic element of the narrative. We suppose that by rewriting the
story about the dragon ancestors of Bao Si, Liu Xiang rather expressed respect for the
authority of the historical monuments he used, but did not need this story to support
his argument against King You of Zhou’s favourite. Removing the backstory of Bao Si’s
birth would not have affected the persuasiveness of the story, for the portrait of Bao
Si already contains typical (according to Liu Xiang) features of a destroyer of state. Secondly,
in Niebizhuan, the biography of Bao Si most of all echoes the biographies of Mo Xi
and Da Ji. In these three biographies Liu Xiang in similar terms outlined the relationship
between sovereigns and their favourites, enriching the text with such and psychological
and everyday details that we do not find in the sources that Liu Xiang used and that have
survived to the present day. By adding these details, the Han scholar and litterateur not
only gave coherence and completeness to his story, he also, what is even more important,
achieved the effect of mutual reinforcement of the impression made by separate
biographies.