The goal of this panel is to provide a forum for rethinking the relationship between lyric and narrative in Chinese poetry by focusing on the concept of lyric agency. Chinese poetry has often been understood primarily as a mode of subjective expression, privileging interiority and affect over narrative representation. This panel begins from a different premise: that lyric form itself constitutes a mode of narrative articulation. If narrative is understood not only as the representation of events but as the structuring of experience, voice, and temporality, then Chinese poetry offers a rich site for examining how poetic form produces agency under conditions of constraint.
Across a range of historical and cultural contexts, from early ci poetry to late imperial women’s writing to contemporary Sinophone and Taiwanese poetry, these papers show that lyric voice is not simply expressive but mediated, constructed, and often fragmented. Rather than presenting coherent narrative sequences, these poetic traditions rely on juxtaposition, displacement, and formal indirection. Emotion unfolds through images, voice emerges through negotiation with linguistic and social limits, and poetic expression becomes a site where agency is both enacted and contested. In this sense, lyric does not stand opposed to narrative but reconfigures it.
This panel engages with several strands of existing scholarship, including lyric theory, narrative theory, Sinophone studies, and translation studies. Recent work has emphasized the constructed nature of lyric subjectivity and expanded narrative beyond linear storytelling, while studies of translingualism and circulation have highlighted the mediation of poetic voice across languages and institutions. However, the intersection of lyric form and narrative agency in Chinese poetry remains underexplored. By bringing these approaches together, the panel interrogates how poetic form functions as a site of articulation rather than merely expression.
The panelists approach these questions from complementary perspectives. Eunju Lee examines Huajian ci, arguing that its fragmented structure and spatialized imagery produce a form of narrative articulation in which emotion itself functions as action. This reading challenges the view of early ci as purely private or decorative and situates it within broader discussions of lyric agency.
Lingheng He turns to late imperial women’s poetry, focusing on the trope of the “demon of poetry” (shimo) to show how women poets articulated literary ambition while negotiating Confucian gender constraints. These texts reveal poetic narration as a space of both self-assertion and tension.
Simona Gallo examines contemporary Sinophone poetry through self-translation, arguing that multilingual poetic practice destabilizes singular authorship and produces a form of linguistic and poetic agency that exceeds equivalence.
Yu-Hsuan Lin analyzes the transnational circulation of Taiwanese poetry in the United States, demonstrating how literary intermediaries shape the recognition of poetic voice and how agency is both enabled and constrained within global literary systems.
Taken together, these papers suggest that poetic agency is not a stable property but a process unfolding across form, discourse, and circulation. By examining how Chinese poetry articulates narrative through fragmentation, mediation, and negotiation, the panel contributes to broader debates on voice, form, and agency in literary studies.
The session will consist of four presentations of approximately 15 minutes each, followed by a moderated discussion and at least 15 minutes of open discussion with the audience.
The panel brings together scholars at different career stages and from institutions across East Asia, North America, and Europe, reflecting a diversity of perspectives and the transnational scope of contemporary Chinese literary studies.