Chinese Literature in Transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

by Holzman,Donald

• ISBN13: 9780860786894
• ISBN10: 0860786897
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-03-28
• Publisher: Variorum

Summary

This volume aims to account for the tremendous changes in the attitudes towards the world and towards themselves that can be seen in the works of Chinese writers in the early centuries of the Christian era. How do the massive conversion of such a large part of the population to Buddhism and the widespread development of the Daoist religion correspond to the conversion of the West to Christianity? Does this conversion to new religions that were replacing the ancient imperial religions represent similar developments on the eastern and western fringes of the Old World? Can we speak with any confidence of the gradual evolution of China from an 'Antiquity' to a 'Middle Ages'? The author attempts to show that, in their attitudes towards literature and their appreciation of landscape, during the Han and the first four centuries of the Christian era, we can see signs of a turning inward and the birth of new forms of spirituality akin to those that arose in the West during the same period.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii-xi	(4)
Acknowledgements	xii
I The Conversational Tradition in Chinese Philosophy Philosophy East and West 6, no. 3. Honolulu, 1956	223-230	(7)
II Confucius and Ancient Chinese Literary Criticism Chinese Approaches to Literature from Confucius to Liang Ch'i-ch'ao, ed. Adele Austin Rickett. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978	21-41	(20)
III Les premiers vers pentasyllabiques dates dans la poesie chinoise Melanges de sinologie offerts a Monsieur Paul Demieville (Bibliotheque de l'Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, Vol. 20, Tome 2). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France & A. Maisonneuve, 1974	77-115	(38)
IV On the Authenticity of the Tetrameter Poetry Attributed to Ruan Ji Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Sinology, Literature, Vol. 1. Taipei, Taiwan: Academia Sinica, 1989	173-200	(27)
V Literary Criticism in China in the Early Third Century AD Asiatische Studien/Etudes Asiatiques 28, no. 2. Bern, 1974	113-149	(36)
VI Landscape Appreciation in Ancient and Early Medieval China: The Birth of Landscape Poetry Hsin-chu, Taiwan: National Tsing Hua University, 1996	1-189	(188)
Addenda and Corrigenda	1-2	(1)
Index	1-4	(3)