Reclassification essay
Take one creature whose records disagree, argue for a single reading, and state what that reading costs the system you proposed at the midterm.
Due: 10 May 2027 · Weight: 15%
The brief#
Take one creature whose records disagree, argue for one reading of it, and say what your reading costs.
Some creatures in the 山海经 (Shānhǎijīng, the Classic of Mountains and Seas) appear twice and cannot be reconciled. 窫窳 (yàyǔ) is dragon-headed and 貙-like in one record and snake-bodied with a human face in the other: 窫窳者，蛇身人面，貳負臣所殺也。 Two bodies, one name, and nothing in either passage that prefers one over the other. 并封 (bìngfēng) is a black pig with a head at each end in the 海外西經, and in the 大荒西經 the same symmetry appears without the pig and under a different name: 有獸，左右有首，名曰屏蓬。 The honest candidates for this essay are 肥遗 (féiyí), 窫窳, 旋龟 (xuánguī), 天吴 (tiānwú), 并封 and 狌狌 (xīngxīng). Another creature is acceptable if its records genuinely disagree and you show that they do.
The disagreement is not the essay. Setting the two records side by side and observing that they differ takes one paragraph, and the text has already done the work. The essay is the part after that: you pick one reading and you hold it.
Holding it has a price, and naming the price is the whole assessment. If you read the two 窫窳 records as one creature, you accept that a body is not a diagnostic character, and every other entry in your system loses its 其狀如 clause as evidence. If you read them as two creatures sharing a name, you accept that names are not identifiers, and your system needs a field it does not currently have. Either reading is defensible. Neither is free, and an essay that does not say which bill it is paying has not finished.
What you submit#
Fifteen hundred to two thousand words. Both records quoted from the edition, character for character, in the traditional forms it prints. A translation may sit beside a quotation; it may not replace one.
The essay reports against your classification design. Say which field breaks under your reading, and whether that means amending the system or accepting the loss. Amending it is permitted and does not count against the proposal.
Close with the condition that would change your mind: a record, a variant, or a commentary that, if it existed, would make your reading untenable. An argument that nothing could unseat is not an argument.
How it is marked#
Holistically, and the marking statement below says why. The course’s position is stated plainly on the policies page: a well-argued wrong reading scores above an unargued right one.
The spec
The brief poses the problem and leaves room for a response. The spec is the fixed part: what a marker checks. Some lines can be checked mechanically; the rest call for judgement.
- names one creature whose records disagree, and quotes both records from the edition
- argues for one reading rather than presenting the disagreement as a balance
- states what the reading costs — which record is set aside, and what is lost with it
- says what evidence would change the reading
How it is marked
Judged as one argument rather than against separate criteria, because the parts cannot be marked apart. A reading, the evidence for it, and the declared cost of adopting it either hold together or they do not. A well-argued reading the marker disagrees with scores above an unargued reading the marker shares.