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Chinese literature spans back thousands of years, from the earliest recorded dynastic court archives to the matured fictional novel arising in the medieval period to entertain the masses of literate Chinese. Although the introduction of widespread woodblock printing during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and the invention of movable type printing by Bi Sheng (990-1051) during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) did not extinguish the importance or emphasis laid upon written Chinese calligraphy, these two forms of printing rapidly spread written knowledge throughout China like never before. In more modern times, the author Lu Xun (1881-1936) would be considered the founder of modern baihua literature in China.

Contents [hide] 1 Classical texts 2 Historical texts and encyclopedias 3 Classical Poetry 4 Classical Prose 4.1 Early prose 4.2 Later prose 4.3 List of contributors 5 Novels 6 Modern 6.1 Post-Mao 6.2 List of modern Chinese writers 7 Overseas Chinese Literature 8 Others 9 See also 10 References 11 External links

 

[edit] Classical texts

Main article: Chinese classic texts

China has a wealth of classical literature, both poetry and prose, dating from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770-256 BCE) and including the Classics, whose compilation is attributed to Confucius. Among the most important classics in Chinese literature are I Ching or Yi Jing 易經 (Book of Changes or Classic of Changes), a manual of divination based on eight trigrams attributed to the mythical emperor Fu Xi . (By Confucius' time these eight trigrams had been multiplied to sixty-four hexagrams.) The I Ching is still used by adherents of folk religion. The Shijing 詩經 (Classic of Poetry) is made up of 305 poems divided into 160 folk songs; 74 minor festal songs, traditionally sung at court festivities; 31 major festal songs, sung at more solemn court ceremonies; and 40 hymns and eulogies, sung at sacrifices to gods and ancestral spirits of the royal house. The Shujing 書經 (Classic of History or Classic of Documents) is a collection of documents and speeches alleged to have been written by rulers and officials of the early Zhou period and before. It contains the best examples of early Chinese prose. The Liji 禮記 (Record of Rites), a restoration of the original Lijing 禮經 (Classic of Rites), lost in the third century B.C., describes ancient rites and court ceremonies. The Chun Qiu 春秋 (Spring and Autumn Annals) is a historical record of the principality of Lu, Confucius' native state, from 722 to 479 B.C.. It is a log of concise entries probably compiled by Confucius himself. The Lunyu 論語 (Analects of Confucius) is a book of pithy sayings attributed to Confucius and recorded by his disciples.

In the realm of martial classics, the Art of War (孫子兵法) by Sun Tzu in the 6th century BC marks the first milestone in the tradition of Chinese military treatises written in following ages, such as the Wujing Zongyao (武經總要; 1044 AD) and the Huolongjing (火龍神器陣法; mid 14th century, preface in 1412 AD). Furthermore, the Art of War is perhaps the first to outline guidelines for effective international diplomacy.

 

[edit] Historical texts and encyclopedias

Main article: Chinese historiography

Although court records and other independent records existed beforehand, the definitive work in early Chinese historical writing was the Shiji (史記/史记), written by the Han Dynasty court historian Sima Qian (145 BC-90 BC). This groundbreaking text laid the foundation for Chinese historiography and the many official Chinese historical texts compiled for each dynasty thereafter. He is often compared to the Greek Herodotus in scope and method, as he covered Chinese history from the mythical Xia Dynasty up until the contemporary reign of Emperor Wu of Han, while pertaining an objective and non-biased standpoint (which is often difficult for the official dynastic histories who used historical works to justify the reign of the current dynasty). His influence was far and wide and impacted the written works of many Chinese historians, including the works of Ban Gu and Ban Zhao in the 1st and 2nd centuries, or even Sima Guang in the 11th century with his enormous compilation of the Zizhi Tongjian (資治通鑒/资治通鉴) presented to Emperor Shenzong of Song in 1084 AD. The overall scope of the historiographical tradition in China is termed the Twenty-Four Histories, created for each successive Chinese dynasty up until the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), as China's last dynasty, the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), is not included.

There were also large encyclopedias produced in China throughout the ages. In the Song Dynasty alone, the compilation of the Four Great Books of Song (10th century - 11th century) begun by Li Fang and finalized by Cefu Yuangui represented a massive undertaking of written material covering a wide range of different subjects. This included the Extensive Records of the Taiping Era (978), the Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era (983), the Finest Blossoms in the Garden of Literature (986), and the Prime Tortoise of the Record Bureau (1013). Although these Song Dynasty Chinese encyclopedias featured millions of written Chinese characters each, they paled in comparison to the later Qing Dynasty encyclopedia printed in 1726, the Gujin Tushu Jicheng. This compilation featured over 100 million written Chinese characters in over 800,000 pages, printed in 60 different copies using copper-metal Chinese movable type printing.

 

[edit] Classical Poetry

Main article: Chinese poetry

Among the earliest and most influential poetic anthologies was the Chuci 楚辭 (Songs of Chu), made up primarily of poems ascribed to the semilegendary Qu Yuan 屈原 (ca. 340-278 B.C.) and his follower Song Yu 宋玉 (fourth century B.C.). The songs in this collection are more lyrical and romantic and represent a different tradition from the earlier Shijing. During the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), this form evolved into the fu 賦 , a poem usually in rhymed verse except for introductory and concluding passages that are in prose, often in the form of questions and answers. The era of disunity that followed the Han period saw the rise of romantic nature poetry heavily influenced by Taoism. The Han Chinese astronomer, mathematician, and inventor Zhang Heng (78-139 AD) was also largely responsible for the early development of Shi (詩) poetry.

Classical poetry reached its zenith during the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907). The early Tang period was best known for its lushi (regulated verse), an eight-line poem with five or seven words in each line; zi (verse following strict rules of prosody); and jueju (truncated verse), a four-line poem with five or seven words in each line. The two best-known poets of the period were Li Bai (701-762) and Du Fu (712-770). Li Bai was known for the romanticism of his poetry; Du Fu was seen as a Confucian moralist with a strict sense of duty toward society. Later Tang poets developed greater realism and social criticism and refined the art of narration. One of the best known of the later Tang poets was Bai Juyi (772-846), whose poems were an inspired and critical comment on the society of his time.

Subsequent writers of classical poetry lived under the shadow of their great Tang predecessors, and although there were many fine poets in subsequent dynasties, none reached the level of this period. As the classical style of poetry became more stultified, a more flexible poetic medium, the 詞 ci, arrived on the scene. The ci, a poetic form based on the tunes of popular songs, some of Central Asian origin, was developed to its fullest by the poets of the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD). The Song era poet Su Shi (1037-1101 AD) mastered ci, shi, and fu forms of poetry, as well as prose, calligraphy, and painting.

As the ci gradually became more literary and artificial after Song times, Chinese Sanqu poetry , a freer form, based on dramatic arias, developed. The use of sanqu songs in drama marked an important step in the development of vernacular literature.

• List of Chinese language poets

 

[edit] Classical Prose

 

[edit] Early prose

The proponents of the Hundred Schools of Thought in the Warring States Period and Spring and Autumn periods made important contributions to Chinese prose style. The writings of Mo Zi 墨子 (Mo Di, 470-390 B.C.), Mencius 孟子 (Meng Zi; 372-289 B.C.), and Zhuang Zi 莊子 (369-286 B.C.) contain well-reasoned, carefully developed discourses and show a marked improvement in organization and style over what went before. Mo Zi is known for extensively and effectively using methodological reasoning in his polemic prose. Mencius contributed elegant diction and, along with Zhuang Zi, is known for his extensive use of comparisons, anecdotes, and allegories. By the third century B.C., these writers had developed a simple, concise prose noted for its economy of words, which served as a model of literary form for over 2,000 years.

 

[edit] Later prose

The Tang period also saw a rejection of the ornate, artificial style of prose developed in the previous period and the emergence of a simple, direct, and forceful prose based on Han and pre-Han writing. The primary proponent of this neoclassical style of prose, which heavily influenced prose writing for the next 800 years, was Han Yu 韓愈 (768-824), a master essayist and strong advocate of a return to Confucian orthodoxy. The literary category of 'travel record literature' that became popular during the Song Dynasty employed the use of prose (as well as diary and narrative format), and included such seasoned veterans of travel experience as Fan Chengda (1126-1193) and Xu Xiake (1587-1641). A great literary example of this would also be Su Shi's Record of Stone Bell Mountain from the 11th century.

Vernacular fiction became popular after the fourteenth century, although it was never esteemed in court circles. Covering a broader range of subject matter and longer and less highly structured than literary fiction, vernacular fiction includes a number of masterpieces. The greatest is the eighteenth-century domestic novel Hong Lou Meng 紅樓夢 (Dream of the Red Chamber). A semiautobiographical work by a scion of a declining gentry family, Hong Lou Meng has been acknowledged by students of Chinese fiction to be the masterwork of its type.

 

[edit] List of contributors

• Eight Great Literary Masters of the Tang and Song (Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty) 唐宋八大家
  • Han Yu 韓愈
  • Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元
  • Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修
  • Su Che 蘇轍
  • Su Shi 蘇軾
  • Su Xun 蘇洵
  • Wang Anshi 王安石
  • Zeng Gong 曾鞏
• As well as the two great authors of scientific and technological treatises during the Song period:
  • Shen Kuo 沈括 (1031-1095)
  • Su Song 蘇頌 (1020-1101)
• Ming dynasty
  • Song Lian 宋濂 (1310-1381)
  • Liu Ji 劉基 (1311-1375)
  • Jiao Yu 焦玉
  • Gui Youguang 歸有光 (1506-1571)
  • Yuan Hongdao 袁宏道( 1568-1610)
  • Xu Xiake 徐霞客 (1586-1641)
  • Gao Qi 高啟
  • Zhang Dai 張岱
  • Tu Long 屠隆
  • Wen Zhenheng文震亨
• Qing dynasty
  • Fang Pao 方苞 (1668-1749)
  • Liu Dakui 劉大櫆 (1698-1779)
  • Yao Nai 姚鼐 (1731-1815)
  • Yuan Mei 袁枚 (1716-1798)
  • Gong Zizhen 龔自珍 (1792-1841)
  • Wei Yuan 魏源 (1794-1857)

 

[edit] Novels

• The Si Da Ming Zhu 四大名著 or the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese Literature:
  • Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢, also known as A Dream of Red Mansions or The Story of the Stone and The Chronicles of the Stone, 石頭記, Shítóu Jì), by 曹雪芹 Cáo Xuěqín
  • Water Margin (水滸傳, also known as All Men Are Brothers and Outlaws of the Marsh), by 施耐庵 Shī Nài'ān
  • Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三國演義) by 羅貫中 Luó Guànzhōng
  • Journey to the West (西遊記), also known as Monkey King and Monkey, by 吳承恩 Wú Chéng'ēn

• Other Classic Literature:
  • Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (聊齋誌異), by 蒲松齡 Pú Sōnglíng
  • Jin Ping Mei (金瓶梅), by 蘭陵笑笑生 Lánlíng Xiàoxiàoshēng
  • Fengshen Yanyi (封神演義) or The Investiture of the Gods
  • Xing Shi Yin Yuan Zhuan (醒世姻緣傳) or The Story of a Marital Fate to Awaken the World
  • Ru Lin Wai Shi (儒林外史) or The Scholars, by 吳敬梓 Wú Jìngzǐ
  • Dijing jingwu lüe or Survey of Scenery and Monuments in the Imperial Capital, by Liu Tong

• Drama:
  • Xīxiāngjì (西廂記) or Romance of the West Chamber, by 王实甫 Wang Shifu
  • Dou E Yuan (竇娥冤) or The Injustice to Dou E, by 關漢卿 Guan Hanqing
  • Yuzanji (玉簪記), by 高濂 Gao Lian
  • Hui Lan Ji (灰闌記), by 李行道 Li Xingdao; became the basis for The Caucasian Chalk Circle
  • Mudan Ting (牡丹亭) or The Peony Pavilion, by 湯顯祖 Tang Xianzu

 

[edit] Modern

In the New Culture Movement (1917-23), literary writing style was largely replaced by the vernacular in all areas of literature. This was brought about mainly by Lu Xun (1881-1936), China's first major stylist in vernacular prose (other than the novel), and the literary reformers Hu Shi 胡適 (1891-1962) and Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀 (1880-1942).

The late 1920s and 1930s were years of creativity in Chinese fiction, and literary journals and societies espousing various artistic theories proliferated. Among the major writers of the period were Guo Moruo 郭沫若 (1892-1978), a poet, historian, essayist, and critic; Mao Dun 茅盾 (1896-1981), the first of the novelists to emerge from the League of Left-Wing Writers and one whose work reflected the revolutionary struggle and disillusionment of the late 1920s; and Ba Jin 巴金 (1904-2005), a novelist whose work was influenced by Ivan Turgenev and other Russian writers. In the 1930s Ba Jin produced a trilogy that depicted the struggle of modern youth against the ageold dominance of the Confucian family system. Comparison often is made between Jia (Family), one of the novels in the trilogy, and Hong Lou Meng. Another writer of the period was the gifted satirist and novelist Lao She 老舍 (1899-1966). Many of these writers became important as administrators of artistic and literary policy after 1949. Most of those authors who were still alive during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) were either purged or forced to submit to public humiliation.

The League of Left-Wing Writers was founded in 1930 and included Lu Xun 魯迅 in its leadership. By 1932 it had adopted the Soviet doctrine of socialist realism, that is, the insistence that art must concentrate on contemporary events in a realistic way, exposing the ills of nonsocialist society and promoting the glorious future under communism. After 1949 socialist realism, based on Mao's famous 1942 "Yan'an Talks on Literature and Art," became the uniform style of Chinese authors whose works were published. Conflict, however, soon developed between the government and the writers. The ability to satirize and expose the evils in contemporary society that had made writers useful to the Communist Party of China before its accession to power was no longer welcomed. Even more unwelcome to the party was the persistence among writers of what was deplored as "petty bourgeois idealism," "humanitarianism," and an insistence on freedom to choose subject matter.

At the time of the Great Leap Forward, the government increased its insistence on the use of socialist realism and combined with it so-called revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism. Authors were permitted to write about contemporary China, as well as other times during China's modern period--as long as it was accomplished with the desired socialist revolutionary realism. Nonetheless, the political restrictions discouraged many writers. Although authors were encouraged to write, production of literature fell off to the point that in 1962 only forty-two novels were published.

During the Cultural Revolution, the repression and intimidation led by Mao's fourth wife, Jiang Qing, succeeded in drying up all cultural activity except a few "model" operas and heroic stories. Although it has since been learned that some writers continued to produce in secret, during that period no significant literary work was published.

 

[edit] Post-Mao

The arrest of Jiang Qing and the other members of the Gang of Four in 1976, and especially the reforms initiated at the Third Plenum of the Eleventh National Party Congress Central Committee in December 1978, led more and more older writers and some younger writers to take up their pens again. Much of the literature discussed the serious abuses of power that had taken place at both the national and the local levels during the Cultural Revolution. The writers decried the waste of time and talent during that decade and bemoaned abuses that had held China back. At the same time, the writers expressed eagerness to make a contribution to building Chinese society. This literature, often called "the literature of the wounded," contained some disquieting views of the party and the political system. Intensely patriotic, these authors wrote cynically of the political leadership that gave rise to the extreme chaos and disorder of the Cultural Revolution. Some of them extended the blame to the entire generation of leaders and to the political system itself. The political authorities were faced with a serious problem: how could they encourage writers to criticize and discredit the abuses of the Cultural Revolution without allowing that criticism to go beyond what they considered tolerable limits?

During this period, a large number of novels and short stories were published; literary magazines from before the Cultural Revolution were revived, and new ones were added to satisfy the seemingly insatiable appetite of the reading public. There was a special interest in foreign works. Linguists were commissioned to translate recently published foreign literature, often without carefully considering its interest for the Chinese reader. Literary magazines specializing in translations of foreign short stories became very popular, especially among the young.

It is not surprising that such dramatic change brought objections from some leaders in government and literary and art circles, who feared it was happening too fast. The first reaction came in 1980 with calls to combat "bourgeois liberalism," a campaign that was repeated in 1981. These two difficult periods were followed by the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign in late 1983, but by 1986 writers were again enjoying greater creative freedom.

 

[edit] List of modern Chinese writers

• 王韜 Wang Tao (1828–1897)
• 嚴復 Yan Fu (1853–1924)
• 劉鶚 Liu E (1857–1909)
• 梁啟超 Liang Qichao (1873–1929)
• 王國維 Wang Guowei (1877–1927)
• 胡適 Hu Shih (1891–1962)
• 蘇曼殊 Su Manshu (1894–1918)
• 魯迅 Lu Xun (1881–1936)
• Liang Shih-Chiu (1903-1987)
• 許地山 Xu Dishan (1893–1941)
• 葉聖陶 Ye Shengtao (1894–1988)
• 林語堂 Lin Yutang (1895–1976)
• 茅盾 Mao Dun (1896–1981)
• 徐志摩 Xu Zhimo (1896–1936)
• 郁達夫 Yu Dafu (1896–1945)
• 王統照 Wang Tongzhao (1897–1957)
• 郭沫若 Guo Moruo (1892–1978)
• 老舍 Lao She (1897–1966)
• 朱自清 Zhu Ziqing (1898–1948)
• 田漢 Tian Han (1898–1968)
• 豐子愷 Feng Zikai (1898–1975)
• 聞一多 Wen Yiduo (1899–1946)
• 冰心 Bing Xin (1900–1999)
• 巴金 Ba Jin (1904–2005)
• 沈從文 Shen Congwen (1902–1988)
• 曹禺 Cao Yu (1905–1996)
• 錢鍾書 Qian Zhongshu (1910–1988)
• 何其芳 He Qifang (1912–1977)
• 林海音 Lin Haiyin (1918–2001)
• 張愛玲 Eileen Chang (1920–1995)
• 汪曾祺 Wang Zengqi (1920–1997)
• 金庸 Jinyong (1924—)
• 從維熙 Cong Weixi (1933—)
• 張賢亮 Zhang Xianliang (1936—)
• 白先勇 Bai Xianyong (1937—)
• 高行健 Gao Xingjian, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2000 (1940—)
• 楊牧 Yang Mu (1940-)
• 北島 Bei Dao (1949—)
• 莫言 Mo Yan (1955—)
• 鐵凝 Tie Ning (1957—)
• 蘇童 Su Tong (1963—)
• 吳虹飛 Wu Hongfei (1978—)
• 王小波 Wang Xiaobo (1952-1997)

 

[edit] Overseas Chinese Literature

• You Jin, Singapore

tristan guillermo, philippines

 

[edit] Others

Chinese writers writing in English:

• Ha Jin

 

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