Manipulated Texts
Packaged

These examples are separately named merely to distinguish them from the analogous authorial process, for which see Framed. Packaging often involves the addition of framing elements, but may also use other devices in order to present an older text more advantageously to its later readers.

Chinese Examples

Analects 7, itself a Framed authorial product, was probably also meant to serve as the end of the previous series of chapters, which with Analects 7 itself were four in number (LY 4-7). These four chapters may have been thought to mimic the four thematic divisions into which each of them is divided, and the scene of Confucius's death at the end of Analects 7 was probably meant to end not only that biographically arranged chapter, but the work as a whole. This was not the only attempt to bring the series of Analects modules to a satisfying end; compare next.

Analects 10. This was originally a set of behavioral prescriptions, describing the conduct of an ideal official both at court and at home. It was later reworked by changing the "gentleman" as the subject of its prescriptions to "Confucius," thus transforming it into a close description of the school founder, and providing an even more vivid personal ending to the series than Analects 7 (above). So effective was Analects 10 in this role of a text conclusion that it was later made the basis of a theory by the Sung scholar Hu Yin, separating an upper text (Analects 1-10) from a lower text (Analects 11-20). This coincides sufficiently with the actual earlier and later material that it proved efficacious in explanation, and it was taken up by Itô Jinsai in Japan, where it still has a certain currency.

As an account of the Analects, Hu Yin's theory was improved by Tswei Shu (who distinguished a still later layer, Analects 16-20), by Arthur Waley (who reduced the Hu/Itô earlier layer to Analects 3-9), and finally by ourselves (see The Original Analects), recognizing each Analects chapter as a separate and successive module of accretion. This theory takes note of all the attempts by the Analects proprietors to package its ongoing text record.

The Han Shang-jywn Shu. The SJS was largely formed in pre-Imperial times. It was cannibalized by rival Legalist texts in Han, but not itself extended as a body of statecraft theory. Its framing material (SJS 1 and 26) was however probably added during Han. Those chapters contain the only direct references to Shang-jywn ("Lord Shang"), and include an account of his supposed career in Chin. SJS 1 was adapted from a story about somebody else (see in Transferred), and originally had nothing to do with Lord Shang. It is present in our text solely as packaging material, meant to bring the supposed author of these essays to life for Han readers, not as the monster of cruelty which was his previous image, but as a modernizing statecraft theorist.

Jwangdz 33 is not a chapter of the Jwangdz (in fact, it is somewhat critical of Jwangdz), but rather an essay surveying the world of thought in the early years of Han Wu-di's reign, and arguing for a central place for Dauism in the final Imperial ideology, a question which was then up for decision at the Imperial court. JZ 33 is closely akin to the contemporaneous essay by Szma Tan, which similarly surveys the contemporary scene and recommends an eclectic ideology with Dauism at its core. A third such appeal is found in the last chapter of the Hwainandz, composed by Lyou An in the year 0139, for which (since that chapter is authorial in nature) see under Framed.

Other Examples

John 21 comes after the probable original ending of the Gospel, in John 20 (see Framed). It adds further information about the writer of that work, supposedly at first hand, the result being to enhance the work, in the eyes of its readers, as proceeding from the most intimate sources, and thus as more authentic than any of its predecessor Gospels: Mark, Luke, or Matthew. This was probably done at a time when the various Gospels were competing for acceptance in the early Church.

John is useful, in these examples, as a text which is both Framed and Packaged, and where accordingly analysis must recognize these elements as separate processes.

 

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