Abstract

• The knowledge of versification in Classical Chinese poetry includes tonal and rhyming rules.
• The absence of reliable database for statistics of versification makes it difficult to learn and teach versification, affecting the quality of poetry writing.
• This project consists of a database for Tang and Song Versification, which is expected to replace a similar but flawed database purchased by University Library.
• Primary texts will be re-modified and numbered, and with the aid of electronic rime dictionary, the database will automatically generate the prosodic patterns of the poems, which then are ready for full-text search.
• Guide sessions, sharing sessions will be held, and a conference presentation will be conducted to better disseminate good practices and findings.
• The new database will provide students with comprehensive and new guidelines on versification studies and poetry writing.
• Digital Humanities is a growth trend among young scholars around the world, but Hong Kong postgraduate students rarely participate in this global discussion. This project can encourage them to adopt such methodology in both teaching and conducting research, particularly in illustrating humanities issues and history of poetics in terms of big data.

Brief write-up

Project objectives

This project consists of a database for Tang and Song Versification, which will provide students with comprehensive and new guidelines on versification studies and poetry writing.

Activities, process and outcomes

A database with full text of 48,000 Tang poems and 260,000 Song poems have been constructed with a webpage of identifying tones of Chinese characters, and bibliography of Tang-Song poets.

Deliverables and evaluation

The database has been adopted in courses of disseminated the current output in the courses CHLL2350C “Classical Chinese Poetry: Selected Readings and Writing Practice”, CHLL2131A “Introduction to Chinese Phonology” and CHLL3314 “Major Author(s) (Ci Poetry)”. One conference paper has been presented in “Conference on Building a Techno-Humanities Culture in Hong Kong” in Jan 2022, and the supervisor has given a talk titled “Reunderstanding Chinese Versification: Digital Humanities Initiatives” in April 2022.

Dissemination, diffusion, impact and sharing of good practices

We have merged the database with the database for Ci lyrics tunes for better illustration and comparison of prosodic patterns among different genres. The IT technicians also assigned a most commonly used tone to each character with multiple pronunciations as the default value, with a memo page for feedback and erratum.

Impact on teaching and learning

1 final-year undergraduate student has conducted his final-year thesis with the aid of this database. As undergraduate students reflected that the currently website is very useful to verify basic versification knowledge of versification, it hoped that the database will be further promoted to postgraduate research, especially among MA students. This project also aims at encouraging postgraduate students to adopt Digital Humanities in both teaching and conducting research, particularly in illustrating humanities issues and history of poetics in terms of big data.

Video Report

Please click the following link for viewing the report.
https://cuhk.ap.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=a6d12347-0433-4448-8837-b12300adee0f