A History of Chinese Literature

The date of the beginning of all things has been nicely calculated by Chinese chronologers. There was first of all a period when Nothing existed, though some enthusiasts have at...

In B.C. 551 CONFUCIUS was born. He may be regarded as the founder of Chinese literature. During his years of office as a Government servant and his years of teaching and wanderi...

No Chinaman thinks of entering upon a study of the Five Classics until he has mastered and committed to memory a shorter and simpler course known as The Four Books.

life and habits of the Sage, calculated to provoke a smile among those with whom reverence for Confucius has not been a first principle from the cradle upwards, but received wit...

Names of the authors who belong to this period, B.C. 600 to B.C. 200, and of the works on a variety of subjects attributed to them, would fill a long list. Many of the latter ha...

The poetry which is representative of the period between the death of Confucius and the 2nd century B.C. is a thing apart. There is nothing like it in the whole range of Chinese...

The reader is now asked to begin once more at the sixth century B.C. So far we have dealt almost exclusively with what may be called orthodox literature, that is to say, of or b...

such life returned after its transitory stay on earth. By ignoring the distinctions of contraries “we are embraced in the obliterating unity of God. Take no heed of time, nor of...

Never has the literature of any country been more closely bound up with the national history than was that of China at the beginning of the period upon which we are now about to...

At the beginning of the second century B.C., poetry was still composed on the model of the _Li Sao_, and we are in possession of a number of works assigned to Chia I (B.C. 199-1...

So far as China is concerned, the art of writing history may be said to have been created during the period under review. SSŬ-MA CH’IEN, the so-called Father of History, was bor...

So early as B.C. 217 we read of Buddhist priests, Shih-li-fang and others, coming to China. The “First Emperor” seems to have looked upon them with suspicion. At any rate, he th...

The centuries which elapsed between A.D. 200 and 600 were not favourable to the development and growth of a national literature. During a great part of the time the empire was t...

In the domains of classical and general literature HUANG-FU MI (A.D. 215-282) occupies an honourable place. Beginning life at the ploughtail, by perseverance he became a fine sc...

The T‘ang dynasty is usually associated in Chinese minds with much romance of love and war, with wealth, culture, and refinement, with frivolity, extravagance, and dissipation,...

The classical scholarship of the Tang dynasty was neither very original nor very profound. It is true that the second Emperor founded a College of Learning, but its members were...

The T‘ang dynasty was brought to an end in 907, and during the succeeding fifty years the empire experienced no fewer than five separate dynastic changes. It was not a time favo...

The first move made in the department of history was nothing less than to re-write the whole of the chronicles of the T‘ang dynasty. The usual scheme had already been carried ou...

The poetry of the Sungs has not attracted so much attention as that of the T‘angs. This is chiefly due to the fact that although all the literary men of the Sung dynasty may rou...

Several dictionaries of importance were issued by various scholars during the Sung dynasty, not to mention many philological works of more or less value. The Chinese have always...

The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries witnessed a remarkable political revolution. China was conquered by the Mongols, and for the first time in history the empire passed unde...

If the Mongol dynasty added little of permanent value to the already vast masses of poetry, of general literature, and of classical exegesis, it will ever be remembered in conne...

Turning now to the second literary achievement of the Mongols, the introduction of the Novel, we find ourselves face to face with the same mystery as that which shrouds the birt...

The first Emperor of the Ming dynasty, popularly known as the Beggar King, in allusion to the poverty of his early days, so soon as he had extinguished the last hopes of the Mon...

Novels were produced in considerable numbers under the Ming dynasty, but the names of their writers, except in a very few cases, have not been handed down. The marvellous work k...

Though the poetry of the Ming dynasty shows little falling off, in point of mere volume, there are far fewer great poets to be found than under the famous Houses of T‘ang and Su...

By 1644 the glories of the great Ming dynasty had departed. Misgovernment, referred by Chinese writers to the ascendency of eunuchs, had resulted in rebellion, and the rebel chi...

The second Emperor of the Manchu dynasty, known to the world by his year-title K‘ANG HSI, succeeded to the throne in 1662 when he was only eight years of age, and six years late...

Foremost among the scholars of the present dynasty stands the name of KU CHIANG (1612-1681). Remaining faithful to the Mings after their final downfall, he changed his name to K...

The death of Yüan Yüan in 1849 brings us down to the period when China began to find herself for the first time face to face with the foreigner. The opening of five ports in 184...