Literature

Taiwan 2001

Literature

Earliest Chinese Literary Traditions

The beginnings of Chinese literature go back thousands of years, with the earliest pieces in the Book of Songs 詩經 dating back to the 12th century B.C. A number of scholars believe that writings in the Book of History 書經 (or 尚書) tradition should be classified as history rather than literature. Furthermore, private accounts, as opposed to government archives, have since the time of Confucius been classified as expositions of thought. Official archives were relegated to the realm of history and private writings to that of philosophy, leaving only works belonging to the Book of Songs tradition as being classified as literature. Because the Book of Songs is an anthology of poetry, Chinese literature came to be regarded as a basically lyrical tradition.
The prevalence of this way of thinking has led some scholars to insist that China has no epic traditions, no fiction until the seventh century A.D., and no drama until the 13th century. This ignores the fact that public and private writings "recording words and events" have been produced in China without interruption since the Book of History, and that they have always enjoyed the status of fine literature. They often disregard the narrative traditions contained in the numerous fables that appeared in histories after the Book of History, in philosophical works--such as Chuang Tzu 莊子, Mencius 孟子, Han Fei Tzu 韓非子, the Spring and Autumn Annals of Lu 呂氏春秋, and Lieh Tzu 列子, all written after the fourth century B.C.--and in myths from earlier ages that were preserved in these and similar works.
The earliest fiction in China--be it in the form of a continuation of mythical narrative or an imitation of official history called yeh-shih 野史 ("unofficial history")--was created in the spirit of the fable. The narrative tradition--comprising history, myth, fable, and fiction--balanced and supplemented the lyrical traditions of poetry produced after the Book of Songs.
"Recording words," the other expressed feature of the Book of History, in turn influenced philosophical works and san-wen 散文 (essay-type prose). Philosophical works, like The Analects of Confucius 論語, have been produced since the sixth century B.C., and are basically collections of quotations or records of a master's sayings, inseparable in content and style from the personalities, speech habits, and biographical experiences of the masters themselves. This style of writing, which fuses reason and emotion, served as a model for the essay in later ages. The essay thus became the most important genre in Chinese literature, and san-wen even became a synonym for literature itself, while poetry was considered a specialized branch of literature.
In contrast to the personalism of the essay, Chinese poetry gradually departed from the spoken language and came to stress formalistic rules. Poetry thus became relatively objective and impersonal and, while still lyrical in nature, was often more symbolic and constructive than prose.
The Literary-Vernacular Split

Related to the division of Chinese literature into the traditions of the Book of Songs and the Book of History is the fact that the spoken and written Chinese language are actually two independent representational systems. Chinese writing, having evolved from pictographs, is an ideographic script that expresses meaning directly through the forms of the characters themselves. The Chinese system stands in contrast to the phonetic alphabets and syllabaries of Japan, Korea, and the West, which express meaning through phonetic representation. As a result, Chinese writing constitutes a notational system that is partially independent of the phonemic nature of the Chinese spoken language; and the relative independence of this notational system has had a major effect on Chinese literature.
One example of this effect can be seen in the Book of Songs tradition, which during the several centuries of its evolution gradually broke away from music in pursuit of its own metrical form. The combination of an independent writing system with the Chinese spoken languagewhich in early times was mainly monosyllabicproduced neat lines of four, five, or seven characters, and sometimes three or six. Tonal theory evolved in the fifth and sixth centuries, based on a new apprehension that Middle Chinese syllables had tonal or pitch distinctions that affected meaning. Thus, "even" 平 and "deflected" 仄 tones were matched and contrasted, and words of parallel or antithetical meaning were aligned. Literary forms almost completely divorced from the spoken language developed, such as parallel prose 駢文 and regulated verse 律詩. This formalistic beauty, which derived from a neat matching of written characters, became an important aesthetic characteristic of traditional Chinese poetry.
Following territorial expansion and the establishment of a unified empire encompassing a large number of local dialects, the maintenance of the Book of History tradition depended increasingly on scholars and officials learning a form of written communication called ku-wen 古文 (classical prose). In early antiquity, the classical prose style may have reflected the contemporary spoken language, but it eventually evolved into a purely literary style that allowed the literary language to experience no major syntactic changes for 2,000 years.
Around the fifth century A.D., the spoken language began to gradually evolve from being mainly monosyllabic in nature toward bisyllabicity or polysyllabicity, as the Old Chinese consonant clusters were gradually lost and originally distinct vowels merged. The unchanging stability of the literary language, or wen-yen 文言, thus led to a gradual split with the vernacular language, or pai-hua 白話.
The vernacular literature of the common people, consisting for the most part of fiction and drama, developed parallel to the literature of the scholars, which was composed mainly of poetry and essays written in classical Chinese. Literature written in the classical language received official sanction by becoming the testing material for the examination system, while vernacular literature owed its increasing popularity mainly to growth in the popular entertainment industry.

Copyright (C) May 2001, Government Information Office. All rights reserved. Site design by L.F. Lee
Best viewed with Netscape 4.x or IE 5.x (medium font) at 800 x 600 True Color (32 bit) resolution

		Literature
		Earliest Chinese Literary Traditions The beginnings of Chinese literature go back thousands of years, with the earliest pieces in the Book of Songs 詩經 dating back to the 12th century B.C. A number of scholars believe that writings in the Book of History 書經 (or 尚書) tradition should be classified as history rather than literature. Furthermore, private accounts, as opposed to government archives, have since the time of Confucius been classified as expositions of thought. Official archives were relegated to the realm of history and private writings to that of philosophy, leaving only works belonging to the Book of Songs tradition as being classified as literature. Because the Book of Songs is an anthology of poetry, Chinese literature came to be regarded as a basically lyrical tradition. The prevalence of this way of thinking has led some scholars to insist that China has no epic traditions, no fiction until the seventh century A.D., and no drama until the 13th century. This ignores the fact that public and private writings "recording words and events" have been produced in China without interruption since the Book of History, and that they have always enjoyed the status of fine literature. They often disregard the narrative traditions contained in the numerous fables that appeared in histories after the Book of History, in philosophical works--such as Chuang Tzu 莊子, Mencius 孟子, Han Fei Tzu 韓非子, the Spring and Autumn Annals of Lu 呂氏春秋, and Lieh Tzu 列子, all written after the fourth century B.C.--and in myths from earlier ages that were preserved in these and similar works. The earliest fiction in China--be it in the form of a continuation of mythical narrative or an imitation of official history called yeh-shih 野史 ("unofficial history")--was created in the spirit of the fable. The narrative tradition--comprising history, myth, fable, and fiction--balanced and supplemented the lyrical traditions of poetry produced after the Book of Songs. "Recording words," the other expressed feature of the Book of History, in turn influenced philosophical works and san-wen 散文 (essay-type prose). Philosophical works, like The Analects of Confucius 論語, have been produced since the sixth century B.C., and are basically collections of quotations or records of a master's sayings, inseparable in content and style from the personalities, speech habits, and biographical experiences of the masters themselves. This style of writing, which fuses reason and emotion, served as a model for the essay in later ages. The essay thus became the most important genre in Chinese literature, and san-wen even became a synonym for literature itself, while poetry was considered a specialized branch of literature. In contrast to the personalism of the essay, Chinese poetry gradually departed from the spoken language and came to stress formalistic rules. Poetry thus became relatively objective and impersonal and, while still lyrical in nature, was often more symbolic and constructive than prose. The Literary-Vernacular Split Related to the division of Chinese literature into the traditions of the Book of Songs and the Book of History is the fact that the spoken and written Chinese language are actually two independent representational systems. Chinese writing, having evolved from pictographs, is an ideographic script that expresses meaning directly through the forms of the characters themselves. The Chinese system stands in contrast to the phonetic alphabets and syllabaries of Japan, Korea, and the West, which express meaning through phonetic representation. As a result, Chinese writing constitutes a notational system that is partially independent of the phonemic nature of the Chinese spoken language; and the relative independence of this notational system has had a major effect on Chinese literature. One example of this effect can be seen in the Book of Songs tradition, which during the several centuries of its evolution gradually broke away from music in pursuit of its own metrical form. The combination of an independent writing system with the Chinese spoken languagewhich in early times was mainly monosyllabicproduced neat lines of four, five, or seven characters, and sometimes three or six. Tonal theory evolved in the fifth and sixth centuries, based on a new apprehension that Middle Chinese syllables had tonal or pitch distinctions that affected meaning. Thus, "even" 平 and "deflected" 仄 tones were matched and contrasted, and words of parallel or antithetical meaning were aligned. Literary forms almost completely divorced from the spoken language developed, such as parallel prose 駢文 and regulated verse 律詩. This formalistic beauty, which derived from a neat matching of written characters, became an important aesthetic characteristic of traditional Chinese poetry. Following territorial expansion and the establishment of a unified empire encompassing a large number of local dialects, the maintenance of the Book of History tradition depended increasingly on scholars and officials learning a form of written communication called ku-wen 古文 (classical prose). In early antiquity, the classical prose style may have reflected the contemporary spoken language, but it eventually evolved into a purely literary style that allowed the literary language to experience no major syntactic changes for 2,000 years. Around the fifth century A.D., the spoken language began to gradually evolve from being mainly monosyllabic in nature toward bisyllabicity or polysyllabicity, as the Old Chinese consonant clusters were gradually lost and originally distinct vowels merged. The unchanging stability of the literary language, or wen-yen 文言, thus led to a gradual split with the vernacular language, or pai-hua 白話. The vernacular literature of the common people, consisting for the most part of fiction and drama, developed parallel to the literature of the scholars, which was composed mainly of poetry and essays written in classical Chinese. Literature written in the classical language received official sanction by becoming the testing material for the examination system, while vernacular literature owed its increasing popularity mainly to growth in the popular entertainment industry. Copyright (C) May 2001, Government Information Office. All rights reserved. Site design by L.F. Lee Best viewed with Netscape 4.x or IE 5.x (medium font) at 800 x 600 True Color (32 bit) resolution