Rhetoric of imperial abdication and accession in a third-century Chinese court : the case of Cao Pi's accession as emperor of the Wei dynasty / David R. Knechtges -- Court, politics, and rhetoric in England, 1310-1330 / Scott L. Waugh -- Poems for the emperor : imperial tastes in the early ninth century / Pauline Yu -- Claiming the past for the present : Ichijo Kaneyoshi and Tales of Ise / Steven D. Carter -- Emperor and the ink plum : tracing a lost connection between literati and Huizong's court / Ronald Egan -- Personal crisis and communication in the life of Cao Zhi / Robert Joe Cutter -- Keeping secrets in a dark age / Paul Edward Dutton -- Politics of classical Chinese in the early Japanese court / Robert Borgen -- One sight : the Han shu biography of Lady Li / Stephen Owen -- Poetry of palace plaint of the Tang : its potential and limitations / Kuo-ying Wang -- Dante in God's court : the paradise at the end of the road / Eugene Vance -- Practicing nobility in fifteenth-century Burgundian courtly culture : ideology and politics / Arjo Vanderjagt.