From Chunqiu and Zuozhuan to Shiji, women have experienced a downgrade of their formal status in historical records. In Shiji, women, the wives of dukes, lost their formal equality with their duke husbands in terms of being written into state history, as we see in Chunqiu. Their activities, including marriage, returning home, visits, and death, disappeared from Sima Qian’s history for the Spring and Autumn period, which focuses on the activities of male members of ruling lineages. A positive representation of women’s wisdom, eloquence, and authority is no longer in the interest of nor taken as a ritual part of history writing in Shiji. In the terms of representation of women, especially those from the Spring and Autumn period, in Zuozhuan and Shiji, Zuozhuan gave fuller representation of women than Shiji and its attitude toward women was more positive in comparison to the latter. First, Zuozhuan in many examples presented women as having authority, agency and initiative; in the Shiji versions of these stories, the roles of women were reduced in order to strengthen the agency of and focalization through the male members of a ruling lineage toward a goal of a linear logic of succession. Second, Shiji stressed the disruptive role of women in state affairs by intensively preserving the stories in Zuozhuan that associated women with political disasters and emergencies. Third, Zuozhuan had a non-gendered approach to the effect of women’s wisdom, knowledge and eloquence; it left space for complexity of characterization for women. In contrast, Shiji and Lienü Zhuan, where these stories in Zuozhuan were transmitted, emphasized a patterned understanding of women and produced gender role types. With the representation of women in Shiji, the effect of the agency of women in history is patterned. In Shiji, women’s agency is more closely connected to political disasters and negative political situations. In the limited representation of positive heroines, their good roles came from their virtue in being self-restrictive and submissive. It implies as a historical teaching in Shiji that the limitation of the political autonomy of women is a way to promise the success of lineage and tradition.

111 pages / The Zuozhuan 评论 (Zuo Commentaries); a narrative history of China's Spring and Autumn period (722-479 BCE), has been included among the thirteen classics of Confucianism since the Tang dynasty. Yet its pages contain numerous references to Shang and early Zhou divination practices. It seems paradoxical that a text identified with Confucian humanism would be full of references to the supernatural. I suggest that the Zuozhuan builds upon the foundations of the authority of Shang and Zhou ritual to establish the authority of Confucian doctrine. This phenomenon has been mentioned by other scholars, though no study has addressed this directly. It is the goal of this thesis to use passages in the Zuozhuan to demonstrate how authority moved from an external source to an internal source during the Eastern Zhou and to show that Zuozhuan makes use of something that Lakoff and Johnson have called idealized cognitive models.

Metaphors and their use as a rethorical vehicle are examined. Two texts, one in Chinese and one in Swedish, are compared and analyzed to determine the extent to which the associations they create successfully capture the author's intent. Seecondarily, a shift from the assumptions that rhetorical analyses often assume (read: antiquity and Aristotles) to a more abstract internal human platform is suggested. Neurological and cognitive research is cited in support of this shift. The essay examines the question: How can metaphoric contribute to conveying the communicator's intention? By comparing metaphorics used by an historical Chinese rhetor with those used by a contemporary Swedish rhetor. In the former, Zuozhuan describes how Ji Zha commented on Shijing in 770-430 BCE. In the latter, Johan af Donner defends himself in court in 2010. The study culminates in recommendations for a more poetic approach to metaphor. / Utgångspunkten för föreliggande uppsats är att undersöka metaforik. Syftet med studien är att undersöka användningen av metaforen som ett retoriskt medel, i ett kinesiskt exempel och i ett svenskt exempel, och att jämföra dem, samt att resonera kring vilka associationsfält dessa skapar och om de är framgångsrika eller inte. Sekundärt är det också uppsatsens syfte att föreslå en förflyttning av den plattform retoriska analyser ofta utgår ifrån (läs antiken och Aristoteles) till en mer abstrakt inre mänsklig plattform. Studien tar stöd i neurologisk och kognitiv forskning i detta. Uppsatsens frågeställning är: Hur kan metaforik bidra till förståelse för avsändarens intention? Studien jämför metaforer som används av en retor i en tidig kinesisk situation; Zuozhuan berättar om hur Ji Zha kommenterade Shijing, 770-430 f.v.t. och en retor från en svensk nutida situation; Johan af Donner försvarar sig i tingsrätten 2010. Studien mynnar ut i rekommendationer till ett mer poetiskt förhållningssätt till metaforik.