Intertextual Du Fu: A Study of Citation Network Analysis

Abstract: How does a reader give a text meaning? In what ways do we understand the operations of encounters between a text and a reader? Focusing on the materiality of reading, this study aims to understand how anonymous readers in late Chosŏn Korea read the poetry of Du Fu, a renowned literary canon from China. To identify the meaning of the texts as constituted by the readers, we look at both the texts and the readers' practices by identifying the readers' prior knowledge of the text that has been embedded and coded in their reading notes, and by analyzing the relationship between the notes and the main body of poetry. Through this analysis, this paper shows that the reading of texts was performed through constant interactions with interpretive traditions and cultural legacies. Through their practices of reading, consequently, they reveal which communities of interpretation they distinctively belong to. To identify the invisible patterns of the exegetical traditions in their reading practices, we particularly apply methods in digital humanities, such as citation network analysis, which is an effective tool to recognize the structure of relationships among the notes, poems, and many other factors of the texts.