Li 禮 (ritual) as a performative ethical‑aesthetic category: evidence from the Guofeng Section of the Shijing

This article investigates ritual performativity in the poems of the Guofeng section of the classical anthology Shijing, building on the approach developed by Martin Kern in his analysis of the ode Chu ci. The author identifies two key aspects of ritual performativity – the ethical and the aesthetic – demonstrating that the Guofeng poems contain normative ethical patterns essential for the functioning of culture. The poems also possess formal features (reduplicatives, rhyme changes, specific metaphors) that bring them close to ritual speech. The article analyses specific poems (Guan ju, Xiang shu, Junzi xie lao, Junzi yu yi, Huang niao, among others) to show how ritual practice – primarily wedding rituals – is represented through aestheticized description and participant reflection. Special attention is paid to the role of reduplicatives as markers of ritual language and to the connection between ethical categories (shu 淑, junzi 君子) and aesthetic imagery. The author concludes that the ritual performativity of the Guofeng helped consolidate in Chinese culture the idea of the text as a source of ethical norms whose authority is sanctified by ritual.