This volume introduces readers to classical Chinese literature from its beginnings (ca. 10th century BCE) to the tenth century BCE through a conceptual framework centered on textual production and transmission. It focuses on recuperating historical perspectives for the period it surveys, and attempts to draw connections between the past and present.

Wiebke Denecke is Associate Professor of Chinese, Japanese, and Comparative Literature at Boston University and the General Editor of the Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature.
Wai-yee Li is professor of Chinese literature at Harvard University. She has written numerous texts on late imperial Chinese literature and early Chinese historical writings.
Xiaofei Tian is Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University. She has published several works on Middle Period Chinese literature, as well as in late imperial and modern literature and culture.

• TABLE OF CONTENTS


• Acknowledgements


• Contributor List


• Timeline of Chinese Dynasties


• SECTION ONE: INTRODUCTION


• 1. Key Concepts of "Literature" (Stephen Owen)


• 2. Periodization and Major Inflection Points (Stephen Owen)


• SECTION TWO: BASICS OF LITERACY


• I. Technology and Media


• Editor's Introduction (Xiaofei Tian)


• 3. The Chinese Writing System (Imre Galambos)


• 4. Literary Media: Writing and Orality (Christopher M. B. Nugent)


• 5. Manuscript Culture (Christopher M. B. Nugent)


• 6. The Relationship of Calligraphy and Painting to Literature (Ronald Egan)


• II. Institutions of Literary Culture


• Editor's Introduction (Xiaofei Tian)


• 7. Education and the Examination System (Rebecca Doran)


• 8. Text and Commentary: The Early Tradition (Michael Puett)


• 9. Text and Commentary in the Medieval Period (Yu-yu Cheng)


• 10. Literary Learning: Encyclopedias and Epitomes (Xiaofei Tian)


• 11. Libraries, Book Catalogues, Lost Writings (Glen Dudbridge)


• SECTION THREE: LITERARY PRODUCTION


• I. Traditional Genre Spectrum


• Editor's Introduction (Wai-yee Li)


• 12. Classics (David Schaberg)


• 13. Histories (Stephen Durrant)


• 14. Masters (Wiebke Denecke)


• 15. Collections (Xiaofei Tian)


• II. Modern Perspectives on Genre


• Editor's Introduction (Wai-yee Li)


• 16. "Chinese Poetry" (Paul Rouzer)


• 17. Elite versus Popular Literature (Wilt Idema)


• 18. Narrative Genres (Sarah Allen)


• III. Collecting, Editing, Transmitting


• Editor's Introduction (Xiaofei Tian)


• 19. Pre-Tang Anthologies and Anthologization (David R. Knechtges)


• 20. Anthologies in the Tang (Paul W. Kroll)


• 21. The Song Reception of Earlier Literature (Stephen Owen)


• 22. Textual Transmission of Earlier Literature during the Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties (Wai-yee Li)


• IV. Literature and Metaliterature


• Editor's Introduction (Wiebke Denecke)


• 23. Defenses of Literature/Literary Thought/Poetics (Paul Rouzer)


• 24. Concepts of Authorship (Wai-yee Li)


• 25. Tradition Formation: Beginnings to Eastern Han (Stephen Durrant)


• 26. Classicisms in Chinese Literary Culture: Six Dynasties through Tang (Anna Shields)


• SECTION FOUR: MOMENTS, SITES, FIGURES


• Editor's Introduction (Wai-yee Li)


• 27. Moments (Paula Varsano)


• 28. Sites I (Jack Chen)


• 29. Sites II (Wendy Swartz)


• 30. Figures (Wai-yee Li)


• SECTION FIVE: EARLY AND MEDIEVAL CHINA AND THE WORLD


• Editor's Introduction (Wiebke Denecke)


• 31. Colonization, Sinicization, and the Multigraphic Northwest (Tamara T. Chin)


• 32. Translation (Daniel Boucher)


• 33. Shared Literary Heritage in the Sinographic Sphere (Wiebke Denecke, with contributions by Nam Nguyen)


• 34. Sino-Korean Literature (Sim Kyung-ho and Peter Kornicki)


• 35. Early Sino-Japanese Literature (Wiebke Denecke)


• 36. Sino-Vietnamese Literature (Peter Kornicki)