Chinese Literature
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Chinese literature
is one of the major literary heritages of the world, with an uninterrupted
history of more than 3,000 years, dating back at least to the 14th century BC.
Its medium, the Chinese language, has retained
its unmistakable identity in both its spoken and written aspects in spite of
generally gradual changes in pronunciation, the existence of regional and local
dialects, and several stages in the structural representation of the written
graphs, or "characters." Even the partial or total conquests of China
for considerable periods by non-Chinese ethnic groups from outside the Great
Wall failed to disrupt this continuity, for the conquerors were forced to adopt
the written Chinese language as their official medium of communication because
they had none of their own. Since the Chinese graphs were inherently
nonphonetic, they were at best unsatisfactory tools for the transcription of a
non-Chinese language; and attempts at creating a new alphabetic-phonetic written
language for empire building proved unsuccessful on three separate occasions.
The result was that after a period of alien domination, the conquerors were
culturally assimilated (except the Mongols, who retreated en masse to their
original homeland after the collapse of the Yüan [or Mongol] dynasty in
1368). Thus, there was no disruption in China's literary development. |
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Through cultural contacts, Chinese
literature has profoundly influenced the literary traditions of other Asian
countries, particularly Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Not only was the Chinese
script adopted for the written language in these countries but some writers
adopted the Chinese language as their chief literary medium. |
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The graphic nature of the written aspect
of the Chinese language has produced a number of noteworthy effects upon Chinese
literature and its diffusion: (1) Chinese literature, especially poetry, is
recorded in handwriting or in print and purports to make an aesthetic appeal to
the reader that is visual as well as aural. (2) This visual appeal of the graphs
has in fact given rise to the elevated status of calligraphy in China, where it has been regarded for at least the
last 16 centuries as a fine art comparable to painting. Scrolls of calligraphic
renderings of poems and prose selections have continued to be hung alongside
paintings in the homes of the common people as well as the elite, converting
these literary gems into something to be enjoyed in everyday living. (3) On the
negative side, such a writing system has been an impediment to education
and the spread of literacy, thus reducing the
number of readers of literature; for even a rudimentary level of reading and
writing requires knowledge of more than 1,000 graphs, together with their
pronunciation. (4) On the other hand, the Chinese written language, even with
its obvious disadvantages, has been a potent factor in perpetuating the cultural
unity of the growing millions of the Chinese people, including assimilated
groups in far-flung peripheral areas. Different in function from recording words
in an alphabetic-phonetic language, the graphs are not primarily indicators of
sounds and can therefore be pronounced in variant ways to accommodate
geographical diversities in speech and historical phonological changes without
damage to the meaning of the written page. As a result, the major dialects in
China never developed into separate written languages as did the Romance
languages, and, although the reader of a Confucian Classic in southern China
might not understand the everyday speech of someone from the far north, Chinese
literature has continued to be the common asset of the whole Chinese people. By
the same token, the graphs of China could be utilized by speakers of other
languages as their literary mediums. (see also
Chinese writing system) |
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The pronunciation of the Chinese graphs
has also influenced the development of Chinese literature. The fact that each
graph had a monophonic pronunciation in a given context created a large number
of homonyms, which led to misunderstanding and confusion when spoken or read
aloud without the aid of the graphs. One corrective was the introduction of
tones or pitches in pronunciation. As a result, metre
in Chinese prosody is not concerned with the combination of syllabic stresses,
as in English, but with those of syllabic tones,
which produce a different but equally pleasing cadence. This tonal feature of
the Chinese language has brought about an intimate relationship between poetry
and music in China. All major types of Chinese poetry were originally sung to
the accompaniment of music. Even after the musical scores were lost, the poems
were, as they still are, more often chanted--in order to approximate
singing--than merely read. (see also music,
history of) |
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Chinese poetry, besides depending on end
rhyme and tonal metre for its cadence, is characterized by its compactness and
brevity. There are no epics of either folk or literary variety and hardly any
narrative or descriptive poems that are long by the standards of world
literature. Stressing the lyrical, as has often
been pointed out, the Chinese poet refrains from being exhaustive, marking
instead the heights of his ecstasies and inspiration or the depths of sorrow and
sympathy. A short poem in Chinese sometimes resembles a cablegram, wherein
verbal economy is highly desirable. Generally, pronouns and conjunctions are
omitted, and one or two words often allude to highly complex thoughts or
situations. This explains why many poems have been differently interpreted by
learned commentators and competent translators. |
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The line of demarcation between prose
and poetry is much less distinctly drawn in Chinese literature than in other
national literatures. This is clearly reflected in three genres. The fu,
for example, is on the borderline between poetry and prose, containing
elements of both. It uses rhyme and metre and not infrequently also antithetic
structure, but, despite occasional flights into the realm of the poetic, it
retains the features of prose without being necessarily prosaic. This accounts
for the variety of labels given to the fu
in English by writers on Chinese literature--poetic prose, rhyme prose, prose
poem, rhapsody, and prose poetry. |
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Another genre belonging to this category
is p'ien-wen
("parallel prose"), characterized by antithetic construction and
balanced tonal patterns without the use of rhyme; the term is suggestive of
"a team of paired horses," as is implied in the Chinese word p'ien.
Despite the polyphonic effect thus produced, which approximates that of poetry,
it has often been made the vehicle of proselike exposition and argumentation.
Another genre, a peculiar mutation in this borderland, is the pa-ku
wen-chang ("eight-legged essay"). Now generally regarded as
unworthy of classification as literature, for centuries (from 1487 to 1901) it
dominated the field of Chinese writing as the principal yardstick in grading
candidates in the official civil-service examinations. It exploited antithetical
construction and contrasting tonal patterns to the limit by requiring pairs of
columns consisting of long paragraphs, one responding to the other, word for
word, phrase for phrase, sentence for sentence. (see also
Chinese civil service) |
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Chinese prose writing has been diverted
into two streams, separated at least for the last 1,000 years by a gap much
wider than the one between folk songs and so-called literary poems. Classical,
or literary, prose (ku-wen,
or wen-yen)
aims at the standards and styles set by ancient writers and their distinguished
followers of subsequent ages, with the Confucian Classics and the early
philosophers as supreme models. While the styles may vary with individual
writers, the language is always far removed from their spoken tongues.
Sanctioned by official requirement for the competitive examinations and
dignified by traditional respect for the cultural accomplishments of past ages,
this medium became the linguistic tool of practically all Chinese prose writers.
Vernacular prose (pai-hua), in contrast, consists of
writings in the living tongue, the everyday language of the authors.
Traditionally considered inferior, the medium was piously avoided for creative
writing until it was adopted by novelists and playwrights from the 13th century
on. |
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The oldest specimens of Chinese writing
extant are inscriptions on bones and tortoise shells dating back to the last
three centuries of the Shang dynasty (18th-12th
centuries BC) and recording divinations performed at the royal capital. These
inscriptions, like those engraved on ceremonial bronze vessels toward the end of
the Shang period, are usually brief and factual and cannot be considered
literature. Nonetheless, they are significant in that their sizable vocabulary
(about 3,400 characters, of which nearly 2,000 have been reliably deciphered)
has proved to be the direct ancestor of the modern Chinese script. Moreover, the
syntactical structure of the language bears a striking resemblance to later
usages. From the frequent occurrences in the bone inscriptions of such
characters as "dance" and "music," "drum" and
"chimes" (of stone), "words" and "southern"
(airs), it can safely be inferred that, by the Shang dynasty, songs were sung to
the accompaniment of dance and music; but these songs are now lost. (T.-y.L./W.H.N.) |
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Early Chinese literature does not
present, as the literatures of certain other world cultures do, great epics
embodying mythological lore. What information
exists is sketchy and fragmentary and provides no clear evidence that an organic
mythology ever existed; if it did, all traces have been lost. Attempts by
scholars, Eastern and Western alike, to reconstruct the mythology of antiquity
have consequently not advanced beyond probable theses. Shang dynasty material is
limited. Chou dynasty (c. 1111-255 BC)
sources are more plentiful, but even these must at times be supplemented by
writings of the Han period (206 BC-AD 220), which, however, must be read with
great caution. This is the case because Han scholars reworked the ancient texts
to such an extent that no one is quite sure, aside from evident forgeries, how
much was deliberately reinterpreted and how much was changed in good faith in an
attempt to clarify ambiguities or reconcile contradictions. (see also
Chinese mythology) |
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The early state of Chinese mythology was
also molded by the religious situation that prevailed in China at least since
the Chou conquest (12th century BC), when religious observance connected with
the cult of the dominant deities was proclaimed a royal prerogative. Because of
his temporal position, the king alone was considered qualified to offer
sacrifice and to pray to these deities. Shang-ti
("Supreme Ruler"), for example, one of the prime dispensers of change
and fate, was inaccessible to persons of lower rank. The princes, the
aristocracy, and the commoners were thus compelled, in descending order, to
worship lesser gods and ancestors. Though this situation was greatly modified
about the time of Confucius in the early part of the 5th century BC,
institutional inertia and a trend toward rationalism precluded the revival of a
mythological world. Confucius prayed to Heaven (T'ien) and was concerned about
the great sacrifices, but he and his school had little use for genuine myths.
(see also sacred
kingship, Chou dynasty, Confucianism) |
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Nevertheless, during the latter
centuries of the Chou, Chinese mythology began to undergo a profound
transformation. The old gods, to a great extent already forgotten, were
gradually supplanted by a multitude of new ones, some of whom were imported from
India with Buddhism or gained popular acceptance as Taoism
spread throughout the empire. In the process, many early myths were totally
reinterpreted to the extent that some deities and mythological figures were
rationalized into abstract concepts and others were euhemerized into historical
figures. Above all, a hierarchical order, resembling in many ways the
institutional order of the empire, was imposed upon the world of the
supernatural. Many of the archaic myths were lost; others survived only as
fragments, and, in effect, an entirely new mythological world was created. |
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These new gods generally had clearly
defined functions and definite personal characteristics and became prominent in
literature and the other arts. The myth of the battles between Huang-ti
("The Yellow Emperor") and Ch'ih Yu ("The Wormy
Transgressor"), for example, became a part of Taoist lore and eventually
provided models for chapters of two works of vernacular fiction, Shui-hu
chuan (The Water Margin, also
translated as All Men Are Brothers)
and Hsi-yu chi (1592; Journey to the West, also partially translated as Monkey).
Other mythological figures such as K'ua-fu and the Hsi-wang-mu subsequently
provided motifs for numerous poems and stories. |
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Historical personages were also commonly
taken into the pantheon, for Chinese popular imagination has been quick to endow
the biography of a beloved hero with legendary and eventually mythological
traits. Ch'ü Yüan, the ill-fated minister of the state of Ch'u
(771-221 BC), is the most notable example. Mythmaking consequently became a
constant, living process in China. It was also true that historical heroes and
would-be heroes arranged their biographies in a way that lent themselves to
mythologizing. ( He.W./W.H.N.)
(see also hero
worship) |
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The first anthology of Chinese poetry,
known as the Shih
Ching ("Classic of Poetry") and consisting of temple,
court, and folk songs, was given definitive form somewhere around the time of
Confucius (551-479 BC). But its 305 songs are believed to range in date from the
beginning of the Chou dynasty to the time of their compiling. |
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The Shih
Ching is generally accounted the third of the Five
Classics (Wu Ching) of
Confucian literature, the other four of which are: the I Ching ("Classic of
Changes"), a book of divination and cosmology; the Shu Ching ("Classic of
History"), a collection of official documents; the Li
chi ("Record of Rites"), a book of rituals with
accompanying anecdotes; and the Ch'un-ch'iu ("Spring and
Autumn") annals, a chronological history of the feudal state of Lu, where
Confucius was born, consisting of topical entries of major events from 722 to
481 BC. The Five Classics have been held in high esteem by Chinese scholars
since the 2nd century BC. (For a discussion of the I Ching and Shu Ching, see
below Prose
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The poems of the Shih Ching were originally sung to the accompaniment of music; and
some of them, especially temple songs, were accompanied also by dancing. (In all
subsequent periods of Chinese literary history, new trends in poetry were
profoundly influenced by music.) Most of the poems of the Shih Ching have a preponderantly lyrical strain whether the subject
is hardship in military service or seasonal festivities, agricultural chores or
rural scenes, love or sports, aspirations or disappointments of the common folk
and of the declining aristocracy. Apparently, the language of the poems was
relatively close to the daily speech of the common people, and even repeated
attempts at refinement during the long process of transmission have not spoiled
their freshness and spontaneity. In spite of this, however, when the songs are
read aloud and not sung to music their prevailing four-syllable lines conduce to
monotony, hardly redeemed by the occasional interspersion of shorter or longer
lines. |
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If there ever was an epic
tradition in ancient China comparable to that of early India or the West, only
dim traces of it persist in the written records. The Shih
Ching has a few narrative poems celebrating heroic deeds of the royal
ancestors, but these are rearranged in cycles and only faintly approximate the
national epics of other peoples. One cycle, for example, records the major
stages in the rise of the Chou kingdom, from the supernatural birth of its
remote founder to its conquest of the Shang kingdom. These episodes, which,
according to traditional history, cover a period of more than 1,000 years, are
dealt with in only about 400 lines. Other cycles, which celebrate later military
exploits of the royal Chou armies, are even briefer. |
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The Shih
Ching exerted a profound influence on Chinese poetry that, generally
speaking, has stressed the lyrical rather than the narrative element; a
dependence more on end rhymes for musical effect than on other rhetorical
devices; regular lines, consisting of a standard number of syllables; and the
utilization of intonation that is inherent in the language for rhythm, instead
of the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables as is the norm in
Western poetry. The high regard in which this anthology has been held in China
results both from its antiquity and from the legend that Confucius himself
edited it. It was elevated in 136 BC to the position of a major classic in the
Confucian canon. |
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Meanwhile, another type of poetry, also
originating in music and dance, had developed in the south, in the basin of the
Yangtze River, an area dominated by the principality of Ch'u--hence the generic
appellation Ch'u
tz'u, or "songs of Ch'u." These southern songs, though
adorned with end rhymes like the songs of the Shih Ching, follow a different metrical pattern: the lines are
usually longer and more irregular and are commonly (though not always) marked by
a strong caesura in the middle. Their effect is thus rather plaintive, and they
lend themselves to chanting instead of singing. The beginning of this tradition
is obscure because most of the early samples were eclipsed by the brilliant
4th/3rd-century-BC compositions of the towering genius Ch'ü
Yüan, China's first known poet. |
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Among some 25 elegies that are
attributed to Ch'ü Yüan, the most important and longest is Li sao ("On Encountering Sorrow"), which has been
described as a politico-erotic ode, relating by means of a love allegory the
poet's disappointment with his royal master and describing his imaginary travels
in distant regions and the realms of heaven, in an attempt to rid himself of his
sorrow. Ch'ü Yüan committed suicide by drowning in the Mi-lo River;
and his tragic death, no less than his beautiful elegies, helped to perpetuate
the new literary genre. In contrast to the poems of the Shih Ching, which had few successful imitators, the genre created by
Ch'ü Yüan was cultivated for more than five centuries, and it also
experienced later revivals. |
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Prior to the rise of the philosophers in
the 6th century BC, brief prose writings were reported to be numerous; but of
these only two collections have been transmitted: the Shu, or Shu
Ching ("Classic of History"), consisting of diverse kinds
of primitive state papers, such as declarations, portions of charges to feudal
lords, and orations; and the I, or I Ching ("Classic of Changes"), a fortune-telling manual.
Both grew by accretion and, according to a very doubtful tradition, were edited
by Confucius himself. Neither can be considered literature, but both have
exerted influence on Chinese writers for more than 2,000 years as a result of
their inclusion in the Confucian canon. |
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The earliest writings that can be
assigned to individual "authorship," in the loose sense of the term,
are the Lao-tzu, or Tao-te Ching ("Classic of the
Way of Power"), which is attributed to Lao-tzu,
who is credited with being the founder of Taoism and who might have been an
older contemporary of Confucius; and the Lun
yü ("Conversations"), or
Analects (selected
miscellaneous passages), of Confucius. Neither of the philosophers wrote
extensively, and their teachings were recorded by their followers. Thus, the Lao-tzu
consists of brief summaries of Lao-tzu's sayings, many of which are in rhyme
and others in polished prose to facilitate memorization. Likewise, the Analects
is composed of collections of the sage's sayings, mostly as answers to
questions or as a result of discussions because writing implements and materials
were expensive and scarce. The circumstances of the conversations, however, were
usually omitted; and as a consequence the master's words often sound cryptic and
disjointed, despite the profundity of the wisdom. |
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By about 400 BC, writing materials had
improved, and a change in prose style resulted. The records of the discourses
became longer, the narrative portions more detailed; jokes, stories, anecdotes,
and parables, interspersed in the conversations, were included. Thus, the Mencius,
or Meng-tzu, the teachings of
Mencius, not only is three times longer than the Analects
of Confucius but also is topically and more coherently arranged. The same
characteristic may be noticed in the authentic chapters of the Chuang-tzu,
attributed to the Taoist sage Chuang-tzu,
who "in paradoxical language, in bold words, and with subtle profundity,
gave free play to his imagination and thought. . . . Although his writings are
inimitable and unique, they seem circuitous and innocuous. Although his
utterances are irregular and formless, they are unconventional and readable . .
." (from the epilogue of the Chuang-tzu). |
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The first example of the well-developed essay,
however, is found neither in the Mencius nor
in the Chuang-tzu but in the Mo-tzu,
attributed to Mo Ti, or Mo-tzu, a
predecessor of Mencius and Chuang-tzu, whose singular attainments in logic made
him a forceful preacher. His recorded sermons are characterized by simplicity of
style, clarity of exposition, depth of conviction, and directness of appeal. |
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The prose style continued to be
developed by such outstanding philosopher-essayists as Hsün-tzu and his
pupil, the Legalist Han-fei-tzu. The peak of this development, however, was not
reached until the appearance of the first expertly arranged full-length book, Lü-shih
Ch'un-ch'iu ("The Spring and Autumn [Annals] of Mr. Lü"),
completed in 240 BC under the general direction of Lü
Pu-wei. The work, 60 essays in 26 sections, summarizes the teachings of
the several schools of philosophy as well as the folklore of the various regions
of China. |
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Following the unification of the empire
by the Ch'in dynasty (221-206 BC) and the continuation of the unified empire
under the Han, literary activities took new directions. At the Imperial and
feudal courts, the fu genre, a
combination of rhyme and prose, began to flourish. Long and elaborate
descriptive poetic compositions, the fu were
in form a continuation of the Ch'u elegies, now made to serve a different
purpose--the amusement of the new aristocracy and the glorification of the
empire--by dwelling on such topics as the low table and the folding screen or on
descriptions of the capital cities. But even the best fu writing, by such masters of the art as Mei Sheng and Ssu-ma
Hsiang-ju, bordered on the frivolous and bombastic. Another major fu
writer, Yang Hsiung, in the prime of his
career remorsefully realized that the genre was a minor craft not worthy of a
true poet. Nonetheless, the fu was
almost universally accepted as the norm of creative writing, and nearly 1,000
pieces were produced. |
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A more important contribution to
literature by the Han government was the reactivation in 125 BC of the Yüeh
Fu, or Music Bureau, which had been established at least a century earlier to
collect songs and their musical scores. Besides temple and court compositions of
ceremonial verse, this office succeeded in preserving a number of songs sung or
chanted by the ordinary people, including songs from the border areas, which
reveal alien influences. This category -- called yüeh-fu,
for the Music Bureau--includes not only touching lyrics but also charming ballads. |
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One such ballad, "The Orphan,"
tells of an orphan's hardships and disappointments; the form of the poem--lines
of irregular length, varying from three to six syllables (or graphs)--represents
the singer's attempt to simulate the choking voice of the sufferers. Lo-fu
hsing ("The Song of Lo-fu"; also called Mo-shang
sang, "Roadside Mulberry Tree"), recounts how a pretty young lady
declined a carriage ride offered her by a government commissioner. The most
outstanding folk ballad of this period is K'ung-ch'üeh
tung-nan fei ("Southeast the Peacock Flies"). The longest poem of
early Chinese literature (353 lines), it relates the tragedy of a young married
couple who had committed suicide as the result of the cruelty of the husband's
mother. The ballad was probably first sung shortly after AD 200 and grew by
accretion and refinement in oral transmission until it was recorded in final
form for the first time in about 550. Yüeh-fu
songs, most of which are made up mainly of five-syllable lines, became the
fountainhead of a new type of poetry, ku-shih
("ancient-style poems"); contemporary Han dynasty poets at first
merely refined the originals of the folk songs without claiming credit and later
imitated their fresh and lively metre. |
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Prose literature was further developed
during the Ch'in and Han dynasties. In addition to a prolific output of
philosophers and political thinkers--a brilliant representative of whom is Liu
An, prince of Huai-nan, whose work is called Huai-nan-tzu
(c. 140 BC; "The Master of
Huai-nan")--an important and monumental category of Han dynasty literature
consists of historical works. Outstanding among these is the Shih-chi
(c. 85 BC; "Historical
Records," Eng. trans., The Records of
the Grand Historian of China, 2 vol.) by Ssu-ma
Ch'ien. A masterpiece that took 18 years to produce, it deals with major
events and personalities of about 2,000 years (down to the author's time),
comprising 130 chapters and totaling more than 520,000 words. The Shih-chi
was not only the first general history of its kind attempted in China, it
also set a pattern in organization for dynastic histories of subsequent ages. An
artist as well as a historian, Ssu-ma Ch'ien succeeded in making events and
personalities of the past into living realities for his readers; his biographies
subsequently became models for authors of both fiction and history. Ssu-ma's
great successor, the poet-historian-soldier Pan Ku,
author of the Han
shu ("Han Documents"), a history of the Former Han dynasty
containing more than 800,000 words, performed a similar tour de force but did
not equal Ssu-ma Ch'ien in either scope or style. |
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Pan Ku's prose style, though not
necessarily archaic, was more consciously literary--a result of the
ever-widening gap between the spoken and written aspects of the language. This
anomaly was more evident in China than elsewhere, and it was to have
far-reaching effects on the evolution of Chinese literary tradition. In an
attempt to resolve the difficulties of communication among speakers of many
dialects in the empire, a standard literary language, wen-yen, was promoted from the Han
dynasty on. Perpetuated for more than 2,000 years, the literary language failed
to keep pace with changes in the spoken tongue, and eventually it became almost
unintelligible to the illiterate masses. |
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After the fall of the Han dynasty, there
was a long period of political division (AD 220-589), with barely four decades
of precarious unification (AD 280-316/17). Despite the social and political
confusion and military losses, however, the cultural scene was by no means
dismal. Several influences on the development of literature are noteworthy.
First, Buddhism, introduced earlier, had brought
with it religious chants and Indian music, which helped to attune Chinese ears
to the finer distinctions of tonal qualities in their own language. Second,
aggressive northern tribes, who invaded and dominated the northern half of the
country from 316, were being culturally absorbed and converted. Third, the
political division of the empire between the South and the North (as a result of
the domination of non-Chinese in the north) led to an increase in cultural
differences and to a subsequent rivalry to uphold what was regarded as cultural
orthodoxy, frequently resulting in literary antiquarianism. (see also
Sui dynasty) |
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Folk songs flourished in both regions.
In the South, popular love songs, originating in the coastal areas, which now
came increasingly under Chinese political and cultural domination, attracted the
attention of poets and critics. The songs of the North were more militant.
Reflecting this spirit most fully is the Mu-lan
shih ("Ballad of Mu Lan"),
which sings of a girl who disguised herself as a warrior and won glory on the
battlefield. (see also folk
music) |
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Soon the number of writers of
"literary" poetry greatly increased. Among them, two poets deserve
special mention. Ts'ao Chih (3rd century), noted
for his ethereal lyricism, gave definite artistic form to the poetry of the
five-syllable line, already popularized in folk song. T'ao
Ch'ien (4th-5th centuries), also known as T'ao Yüan-ming, is one of
China's major poets and was the greatest of this period. A recluse, he retired
from a post in the bureaucracy of the Chin dynasty at the age of 33 to farm,
contemplate nature, and write poetry. His verse, written in a plain style, was
echoed by many poets who came after him. Using several verse forms with
seemingly effortless ease--including the fu, for Kuei-ch'ü-lai
tz'u ("Homeward Bound")--he was representative of the trend of the
age to explore various genres for lyrical expression. One of his best loved
poems is the following ku-shih,
translated by Arthur Waley; it is one of 12 he wrote at different times after he
had been drinking. |
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I built my hut in a zone of human
habitation, |
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Yet near me there sounds no noise of
horse or coach. |
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Would you know how this is possible? |
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A heart that is distant creates a
wilderness round it. |
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I pluck chrysanthemums under the
eastern hedge, |
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Then gaze long at the distant hills. |
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The mountain air is fresh at the dusk
of day; |
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The flying birds two by two return. |
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In these things there lies a deep
meaning; |
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Yet when we would express it, words
suddenly fail us. |
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As orthodox Confucianism
gradually yielded to Taoism and later to Buddhism, nearly all of the major
writers began to cultivate an uninhibited individuality. Lu
Chi, 3rd-century poet and critic, in particular emphasized the importance
of originality in creative writing and discredited the long-established practice
of imitating the great masters of the past. Still, his celebrated essay on
literature (Wen
fu), in which he enunciated this principle, was written as a fu,
showing after all that he was a child of his own age. The 3rd/4th-century
Taoist philosopher Ko Hung insisted that technique is no less essential to a
writer than moral integrity. The revolt of the age against conventionality was
revealed in the new vogue of ch'ing-t'an
("pure conversation"), intellectual discussions on lofty and
nonmundane matters, recorded in a 5th-century collection of anecdotes entitled Shih-shuo
hsin-yü ("A New Account of Tales of the World") by Liu
Yi-ch'ing. Though prose writers as a whole continued to be most concerned with
lyrical expression and rhetorical devices for artistic effect, there were
notable deviations from the prevailing usage in the polyphonic p'ien-wen ("parallel prose"). In this form, parallel
construction of pairs of sentences and counterbalancing of tonal patterns were
the chief requirements. P'ien-wen was
used especially in works concerned with philosophical disputes and in religious
controversies; but it was also used in the first book-length work of literary
criticism, Wen-hsin
tiao-lung ("The Literary Mind and the Carving of the
Dragon"), by the 6th-century writer Liu Hsieh. (see also
Taoism) |
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Among prose masters of the 6th century,
two northerners deserve special mention: Yang Hsien-chih, author of Lo-yang
Chia-lan chi ("Record of Buddhist Temples in Lo-yang"), and Li
Tao-yüan, author of Shui Ching chu ("Commentary
on the Water Classic"). Although both of these works seem to have been
planned to serve a practical, utilitarian purpose, they are magnificent records
of contemporary developments and charming storehouses of accumulated folklore,
written with great spontaneity and artistry. This age also witnessed the first
impact of Buddhist literature in Chinese translation, which had been growing in
size and variety since the 2nd century. |
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During the T'ang
dynasty (618-907), Chinese literature reached its golden age. |
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In poetry, the greatest glory of the
period, all the verse forms of the past were freely adopted and refined, and new
forms were crystallized. One new form was perfected early in the dynasty and
given the definitive name lü-shih
("regulated verse"). A poem of this kind consists of eight lines
of five or seven syllables--each line set down in accordance with strict tonal
patterns--calling for parallel structure in the middle, or second and third,
couplets. |
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Another verse form much in vogue was the
chüeh-chü;
("truncated verse"). An outgrowth and a shortened version of the lü-shih, it omitted either the first four lines, the last four
lines, the first two and the last two lines, or the middle four lines. Thus, the
tonal quality of the lü-shih was
retained, whereas antithetic structure was made optional. These poems of four
lines, each consisting of five or seven words (syllables or characters), had to
depend for their artistry on suggestiveness and economy comparable to the roba'iyat
("quatrains") of Omar Khayyam and the Japanese haiku. |
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The fine distinctions of tonal
variations in the spoken language had reached their height during this period,
with eight tones; and rules and regulations concerning the sequence of lighter
and heavier tones had been formulated. But since the observance of strict rules
of prosody was not mandatory in the ku-shih
("ancient style") form still in use, it was possible for an
individual poet to enjoy conformity or freedom as he saw fit. |
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Of the more than 2,200 T'ang poets whose
works--totaling more than 48,900 pieces--have been preserved, only a few can be
mentioned. Wang Wei, a musician and the
traditional father of monochrome landscape painting, was also a great poet.
Influenced by Buddhism, he wrote exquisite meditative verse of man's relation to
nature that exemplified his own dictum that poetry should have the beauty of
painting and vice versa. Li Po, one of the two
major poets of the T'ang dynasty, a lover of detachment and freedom,
deliberately avoided the lü-shih and
chose the less formal verse forms to sing of friendship or wine. An example is
the poem "To Tan-Ch'iu," translated by Arthur Waley. |
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My friend is lodging high in the
Eastern Range, |
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Dearly loving the beauty of valleys and
hills. |
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At green Spring he lies in the empty
woods, |
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And is still asleep when the sun shines
on high. |
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A pine-tree wind dusts his sleeves and
coat; |
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A pebbly stream cleans his heart and
ears. |
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I envy you, who far from strife and
talk |
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Are high-propped on a pillow of blue
cloud. |
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Generally considered the greatest poet
of China was Tu Fu, a keen observer of the
political and social scene who criticized injustice wherever he found it and who
clearly understood the nature of the great upheaval following the rebellion of
dissatisfied generals in 755, which was a turning point in the fortunes of the
T'ang. As an artist, Tu Fu excelled in all verse forms, transcending all rules
and regulations in prosody while conforming to and exploiting them. His power
and passion can perhaps be suggested by a single line (translated by Robert
Payne): "Blue is the smoke of war, white the bones of men." |
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One of the admirers of Tu Fu as a
poet-historian was Po Chü-i who, like his
great predecessor, was deeply concerned with the social problems of his age. Po
Chü-i sought to learn from ordinary folk not only naturalness of language
but also their feelings and reactions, especially at the height of his career
when he wrote what he called the Hsin yüeh-fu
shih ("New Yüeh-fu Poems"). |
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At the end of the T'ang and during the Five
Dynasties, another new verse form developed. Composed normally of lines
of irregular length and written as lyrics to musical tunes, this form came to be
known as tz'u,
in contrast with shih, which includes all the verse forms mentioned above. Since the
lines in a tz'u might vary from one to
nine or even 11 syllables, they were comparable to the natural rhythm of speech
and therefore easily understood when sung. |
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First sung by ordinary folk, they were
popularized by professional women singers and, during the T'ang, attracted the
attention of poets. It was not, however, until the transitional period of the
Five Dynasties (907-960), a time of division and strife, that tz'u
became the major vehicle of lyrical expression. Of tz'u
poets in this period, the greatest was Li Yü,
last monarch of the Southern T'ang, who was seized in 976 as the new Sung
dynasty consolidated its power. Li Yü's tz'u
poetry is saturated with a tragic nostalgia for better days in the South; it
is suffused with sadness--a new depth of feeling notably absent from earlier tz'u,
which had been sung at parties and banquets. The following is typical,
translated by Jerome Ch'en and Michael Bullock: |
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Lin
hua hsieh liao ch'un hung |
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T'ai
ch'ung ch'ung |
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Wu
nai chao lai han yü wan lai feng |
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Yen
chih lei |
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Hsiang
liu tsui |
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Chi
shih ch'ung |
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Tzu
shih jen sheng ch'ang hen shui ch'ang tung |
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The red of the spring orchard has
faded. |
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Far too soon! |
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The blame is often laid |
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on the chilling rain at dawn |
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and the wind at dusk. |
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The rouged tears |
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That intoxicate and hold in thrall-- |
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When will they fall again? |
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As a river drifts toward the east |
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So painful life passes to its bitter
end. |
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Besides the early tz'u, the end of the T'ang saw the evolution of another new folk
form: pien-wen ("popularizations,"
not to be confused with p'ien-wen, or
parallel prose), utilizing both prose and verse to retell episodes from the
Buddha's life and, later, non-Buddhist stories from Chinese history and
folklore. |
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In prose writing a major reform was led
by Han Yü; against the peculiarly
artificial prose style of p'ien-wen, which,
cultivated for almost 1,000 years, had become so burdened with restrictive rules
as to make forthright expression virtually impossible. Han Yü boldly
advocated the use of Chou philosophers and early Han writers as models for prose
writing. This seemingly conservative reform had, in fact, a liberalizing effect;
for the sentence unit in prose writing was now given perfect freedom to seek its
own length and structural pattern as logic and content might dictate, instead of
slavishly conforming to the rules of p'ien-wen.
This new freedom enabled Liu Tsung-yüan,
Han Yü's chief associate in the literary reform, to write charming travel
and landscape pieces. It also accelerated the development of a new genre in
prose: well-made tales of love and romance, of heroic feats and adventures, of
the mysterious and supernatural, and of imaginary incidents and fictionalized
history. Among the 9th-century writers of such prose romances were Han Yü's
pupil Shen Ya-chih and Po Hsing-chien, younger brother of the poet Po Chü-i.
These prose romances, generally short, were written in the classical prose style
for the amusement of the literati and did not reach the masses until some of the
popular ones were adapted by playwrights in later ages. |
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The Sung dynasty was marked by cultural
advancement and military weakness. During this period, literary output was
spectacularly increased, thanks mainly to the improvement of printing (invented
in the 8th century) and to the establishment of public schools throughout the
empire (from 1044). Nearly all the literary genres in verse and prose were
continued; and some trends, begun in T'ang times, were accelerated. |
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In prose, the reform initiated by Han Yü
in the name of ancient, more straightforward style (ku-wen) was reemphasized by such 11th-century writers as Ou-yang
Hsiu and Su Tung-p'o. Both men held high rank in
the civil service and were great painters as well as leading poets.
Nevertheless, their contribution to prose writing in ku-wen style was as important as their poetry. The ku-wen
movement was further supported by men whose primary interest was not belles
lettres, such as Ssu-ma Kuang, the
statesman-historian, and Chu Hsi, the
scholar-philosopher and principal formulator of Neo-Confucianism. |
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In prose fiction there were two distinct
trends. Short tales in ku-wen were
written in ever greater bulk but failed to maintain the level achieved in the
T'ang dynasty. The subject matter became more fragmentary and anecdotal and the
style duller. In sharp contrast to the ku-wen
school, which was still a literary language despite the movement toward
naturalness of expression, there arose a school of storytelling in the
vernacular. Almost purely oral in origin, these tales reflected the style of the
storyteller who entertained audiences gathered in marketplaces, fairgrounds, or
temple yards. In the 12th century they became fairly lengthy, connected stories,
especially those dealing with fictionalized history. This elevation of the
everyday speech of the common people as a medium of story writing of the hua-pen
("vernacular story") type was to open up new vistas in prose
fiction in later periods. (see also pai-hua,
oral literature) |
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Poetry of the conventional type (shih)
was cultivated by numerous rival schools, each claiming many illustrious
members. On the whole, the rival literary movements were significant as steps
toward greater naturalness in syntax, and a few outstanding writers approximated
the spoken vernacular language. Among the many shih
poets of the Sung dynasty, Lu Yu, who
flourished in the 12th century, was a towering figure. A traveler and patriot,
he wrote throughout his long career no fewer than 20,000 poems, of which more
than 9,000 have been preserved. |
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But it was in their utilization of the
newer verse form, tz'u, that Sung
poets achieved their greatest distinction, making tz'u the major genre of the dynasty. As noted above, the tz'u
form had been popularized at first orally by women singers; and the first
generation of tz'u writers had been inspired and guided by them in sentiment,
theme, and diction; their lyrics were thus redolent with the fragrance of these
women. Later in the 12th century, as men (and one great woman) of letters began
to take over, the tz'u form reached
the heights of great art. Ou-yang Hsiu and Li
Ch'ing-chao, the latter generally considered the greatest woman poet of
China, may be considered representatives of this trend. Li Ch'ing-chao's poems,
paralleling her life, are intensely personal. They at first dealt with the joys
of love, but gradually their tone darkened to one of despair, caused first by
frequent and lengthy separations from her husband, who was in government
service, and then by his untimely death. |
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Other masters of the tz'u were Su Tung-p'o and Hsin Ch'i-chi,
the latter a soldier turned recluse. It was Hsin Ch'i-chi who imbued the writing
of tz'u with new characteristics by
rising above rules without breaking them, surpassing in this respect his
contemporaries as well as those who came after him. |
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Fleeing from the Chin (Juchen) Tatars,
who captured their capital in 1127, the Sung officials and courtiers retreated
southward. For almost a century and a half, China was again divided. And in
spite of political reunification by Kublai Khan, founder of the Yüan, or
Mongol, dynasty (beginning in 1206 in the North and comprising the whole of
China by 1280), the cultural split persisted. In the South, where China's
historic traditions found asylum, racial and cultural homogeneity persisted. In
fact, the centre of Chinese philosophy and traditional literature never again
returned north of the Yangtze Delta. But in the North new developments arose,
which led to wholly new departures. First, the migration and fusion of the
various ethnic groups gave birth to a common spoken language with fewer tones,
which later was to become the basis of a national language; second, with the
southward shift of the centre of traditional culture, the prestige of the old
literature began to decline in the North, especially in the eyes of the
conquerors. Thus, in contrast to the South, North China under the Yüan
dynasty provided a unique milieu for unconventional literary activities. |
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In this period, dramatic literature came
into a belated full flowering. The skits and vaudeville acts, the puppet shows
and shadow plays of previous ages had laid the foundation for a full-fledged
drama; but the availability of Indian and Iranian models during the Yüan
dynasty may have been a more immediate cause for its accelerated growth. Many
Chinese men of letters refused to cooperate with the alien government, seeking
refuge in painting and writing. As the new literary type developed--the drama of
four or five acts, complete with prologue and epilogue and including songs and
dialogue in language fairly close to the daily speech of the people--many men of
letters turned to playwriting. Between 1234 and 1368, more than 1,700 musical
plays were written and staged, and 105 dramatists were recorded; moreover, there
is an undetermined number of anonymous playwrights whose unsigned works have
been preserved but discovered only in the 20th century. This remarkable burst of
literary innovation, however, failed to win the respect of the orthodox critics
and official historians. No mention of it was made in the copious dynastic
history, Yüan shih; and casual
references in the collected works of contemporary writers were few. Many plays
were allowed to fall into oblivion. It was not until 1615 that a bibliophile
undertook to reprint, as a collection, 100 of the 200 plays he had seen. Even
after ardent searches by 20th-century librarians and specialists, the number of
extant Yüan dramas has been increased to only 167, hardly 10 percent of the
number produced. Moreover, since the musical scores have been lost, the plays
cannot be produced on the stage in the original manner. (see also
dramatic literature) |
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Among the Yüan dramatists, the
following deserve special mention. Kuan Han-ch'ing,
the author of some 60 plays, was the first to achieve distinction. His Tou-o
yüan ("Injustice Suffered by Tou-o") deals with the
deprivations and injustices suffered by the heroine, Tou-o, which begin when she
is widowed shortly after her marriage to a poor scholar and culminate in her
execution for a crime she has not committed. Wang
Shih-fu, Kuan's contemporary, wrote Hsi-hsiang
chi (Romance of the Western
Chamber), based on a popular T'ang
prose romance about the amorous exploits of the poet Yüan Chen, renamed
Chang Chun-jui in the play. Besides its literary merits and its influence on
later drama, it is notable for its length, two or three times that of the
average Yüan play. Ma Chih-yüan, another contemporary, wrote 14 plays,
of which the most celebrated is Han-kung
ch'iu ("Sorrow of the Han Court"). It deals with the tragedy of a
Han dynasty court lady, Wang Chao-chün, who, through the intrigue of a
vicious portrait painter, was picked by mistake to be sent away to Central Asia
as a chieftain's consort. Like the Romance
of the Western Chamber, this play has been translated into western European
languages. |
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This new literary genre acquired certain
distinct characteristics: (1) All extant compositions may be described as
operas; (2) each play normally consists of four acts following a prologue; (3)
the language of both the dialogue (for the most part in prose) and the
arias--which alternate throughout the play--are fairly close to the daily speech
of ordinary people; (4) all of the arias are in rhymed verse, and only one end
rhyme is used throughout an act; (5) all of the arias in an act are sung by only
one actor; (6) nearly all of the plays have a happy ending; (7) the characters
in most of the plays are people of the middle and underprivileged classes--poor
scholars, bankrupt merchants, Buddhist nuns, peasants, thieves, kidnappers,
abductors, and women entertainers--antedating a similar trend in European drama
by nearly four centuries. (see also Chinese
opera) |
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At least 12 of the playwrights thus far
identified were Sinicized members of originally non-Chinese ethnic
groups--Mongols, Juchens, Uighurs, and other Central Asians. |
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Another literary innovation, preceding
but later interacting with the rise of the drama, was a new verse form known as san-ch'ü;
("nondramatic songs"), a liberalization of the tz'u,
which utilized the spoken language of the people as fully as possible.
Although line length and tonal pattern were still governed by a given tune,
extra words could be inserted to make the lyrics livelier and to clarify the
relationship between phrases and clauses of the poem. The major dramatists were
all masters of this genre. (see also tone) |
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Similarly, fiction writers who wrote in
a semivernacular style began to emerge, continuing the tradition of storytellers
of the past or composing lengthy works of fiction written almost entirely in the
vernacular. All of the early pieces of this type of book-length fiction were
poorly printed and anonymously or pseudonymously published. Although many early
works were attributed to such authors as Lo Kuan-chung,
there is little reliable evidence of his authorship in any extant work. These
novels exist in numerous, vastly different versions that can best be described
as the products of long evolutionary cycles involving several authors and
editors. The best known of the works attributed to Lo are San-kuo
chih yen-i (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), Shui-hu
chuan (The Water Margin), and P'ing-yao
chuan ("The Subjugation of the Evil Phantoms"). The best of the
three from a literary standpoint is the Shui-hu
chuan, which gives full imaginative treatment to a long accretion of
stories and anecdotes woven around a number of enlightened bandits--armed social
and political dissenters. |
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The Yüan dynasty was succeeded by
the Ming dynasty, under which cultural influences from the South--expressed in
movements toward cultural orthodoxy--again became important. Nearly all the
major poets and prose writers in traditional literature were southerners, who
enthusiastically launched and supported antiquarian movements based on a return
to models of various ages of the past. With the restoration of competitive
literary examinations, which had been virtually discontinued under the Mongols,
the highly schematic pa-ku
wen-chang ("eight-legged essay") was adopted as the chief
yardstick in measuring a candidate's literary attainments. Despite occasional
protests, it continued to engage the attention of aspirants to official literary
honours from 1487 to 1901. |
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Although Ming poets wrote both shih
and tz'u and their output was prodigious, poetry on the whole was
imitative rather than freshly creative. Tirelessly, the poets produced verses
imitating past masters, with few individually outstanding attainments. |
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Prose writers in the classical style
were also advocates of antiquarianism and conscious imitators of the great
masters of past ages. Rival schools were formed, but few writers were able to
rise above the ruts of conventionalism. The Ch'in-Han school tried to underrate
the achievements of Han Yü and Liu Tsung-yüan, along with the Sung
essayists, and proudly declared that post-Han prose was not worth reading. The
T'ang-Sung school, on the other hand, accused its opponents of limited vision
and reemphasized Han Yü's dictum that literature should be the vehicle of
Tao, equated with the way of life taught by orthodox Confucianism. These
continuous squabbles ultimately led nowhere, and the literary products were only
exquisite imitations of their respective models. |
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The first voice of protest against
antiquarianism was not heard until the end of the 16th century; it came from the
Kung-an school, named for the birthplace of three brothers, of whom the middle
one was the best known. Yüan Hung-tao challenged all of the prevailing
literary trends, advocating that literature should change with each age and that
any attempt at erasing the special stamp of an era could result only in slavish
imitation. Declaring that he could not smile and weep with the multitude, he
singled out "substantiality" and "honesty with oneself" as
the chief prerequisites of a good writer. |
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This same spirit of revolt was shared by
Chung Hsing and T'an Yüan-ch'un, of a later school, who were so
unconventional that they explored the possibilities of writing intelligibly
without observing Chinese grammatical usages. Although their influence was not
long lasting, these two schools set the first examples of a new subgenre in
prose--the familiar essay. |
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It was in vernacular literature that the
writers of this period made a real contribution. In drama, a tradition started
in the Sung dynasty and maintained in southern China during the period of Mongol
domination was revitalized. This southern drama, also musical and known as ch'uan-ch'i
("tales of marvels"), had certain special traits: (1) a ch'uan-ch'i
play contains from 30 to 40 changes of scene; (2) the change of end rhymes
in the arias is free and frequent; (3) the singing is done by many actors
instead of by the hero or heroine alone; (4) many plots, instead of being
extracted from history or folklore, are taken from contemporary life. |
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Since there were no rules regulating the
structure of the ch'uan-ch'i, playlets
approaching the one-act variety were also written. This southern theatre
movement, at first largely carried on by anonymous amateurs, won support
gradually from the literati until finally, in the 16th century, a new and
influential school was formed under the leadership of the poet-singer Liang
Ch'en-yü; and his friend the great actor Wei
Liang-fu. The K'un school, initiating a style of soft singing and subtle
music, was to dominate the theatre to the end of the 18th century. (see also
k'un ch'ü, music,
history of) |
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Aside from drama and ta-ch'ü (a suite of melodies sung in narration of stories),
which in the South were noticeably modified in spirit and structure, becoming
more ornate and bookish--it was prose fiction that made the greatest progress in
the 16th century. Two important novels took shape at that time. Wu
Ch'eng-en's Hsi-yu
chi is a fictionalized account of the pilgrimage of the Chinese monk Hsüan-tsang
to India in the 7th century. The subject matter was not new; it had been used in
early hua-pen, or "vernacular
story," books and Yüan drama; but it had never been presented at
length in such a lively and rapid-moving narration. Of all of the 81 episodes of
trial and tribulation experienced by the pilgrim, no two are alike. Among the
large number of monsters introduced, each has unique individuality. Like the Shui-hu
chuan, it reveals the influence of the style of the oral storytellers, for
each chapter ends with the sentence "in case you are interested in what is
to follow, please listen to the next installment, which will reveal it."
Unlike the Shui-hu chuan, which was written in a kind of semivernacular, the
language used was the vernacular of the living tongue. For the author the choice
must have been a deliberate but difficult one, for he had the novel first
published anonymously to avoid disapproval. Besides eliciting numerous
commentaries and "continuations" in China, it has two English
translations. |
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The title of the second novel (the
author of which is unknown), Chin
P'ing Mei, is composed of graphs from the names of three female
characters. Written in an extremely charming vernacular prose style, the novel
is a well-knit, long narrative of the awful debaucheries of the villain Ch'ing
Hsi-men. The details of the different facets of life in 16th-century China are
so faithfully portrayed that it can be read almost as a documentary social
history of that age. The sexual perversions of the characters are so elaborately
depicted that several Western translators have rendered a number of indelicate
passages in Latin. The novel has been banned in China more than once, and all
copies of the first edition of 1610 were destroyed. |
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The conquest of China by the Manchus, a
Mongol people from the region north of China who set up the Ch'ing dynasty in
1644, did not disrupt the continuation of major trends in traditional
literature. (During the literary inquisition of the 18th century, however, many
books suspected of anti-Manchu sentiments were destroyed; and numerous literati
were imprisoned, exiled, or executed.) Antiquarianism dominated literature as
before, and excellent poetry and prose in imitation of ancient and medieval
masters continued to be written, many works rivaling the originals in archaic
beauty and cadence. Although the literary craftsmanship was superb, genuine
creativity was rare. |
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In the field of tz'u writing, the 17th-century Manchu poet Nara Singde (Sinicized
name, Na-lan Hsing-te) was outstanding; but even he lapsed into conscious
imitation of Southern T'ang models except when inspired by the vastness of open
space and the beauties of nature. In nonfictional prose, Chin Jen-jui continued
the familiar essay form. (see also tz'u) |
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P'u Sung-ling
continued the prose romance tradition by writing in ku-wen
("classical language") a series of 431 charming stories of the
uncanny and the supernatural entitled Liao-chai
chih-i (1766; "Strange Stories from the Liao-chai Studio";
Eng. trans., Strange Stories from a
Chinese Studio). This collection, completed in 1679, was reminiscent of the
early literary tale tradition, for it contained several T'ang stories retold
with embellishments and minor changes to delineate the characters more
realistically and to make the plots more probable. Such traditional supernatural
beings as fox spirits, assuming in these stories temporary human form in the
guise of pretty women, became for the first time in Chinese fiction humanized
and likable. Despite the seeming success of these tales, the author soon became
aware of the limitations of the ku-wen
style for fiction writing and proceeded to produce a vernacular novel of
some 1,000,000 words, the Hsing-shihyin-yüan
chuan ("A Marriage to Awaken the World"). This long story of a
shrew and her henpecked husband was told without any suggestion of a solution to
the problems of unhappy marriages. Unsure of the reaction of his colleagues to
his use of the vernacular as a literary medium, P'u Sung-ling had this longest
Chinese novel of the old school published under a pseudonym. |
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Wu Ching-tzu
satirized the 18th-century literati in a realistic masterpiece, Ju-lin
wai-shih (c. 1750;
"Unofficial History of the Literati"; Eng. trans., The
Scholars), 55 chapters loosely strung together in the manner of a picaresque
romance. Unlike P'u Sung-ling, whom he far surpassed in both narration and
characterization, he adopted the vernacular as his sole medium for fiction
writing. |
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Better known and more widely read was Ts'ao
Chan's Hung-lou meng (Dream
of the Red Chamber), a
novel of a love triangle and the fall of a great family, also written in the
vernacular and the first outstanding piece of Chinese fiction with a tragic
ending. Because its lengthy descriptions of poetry contests, which interrupt the
narrative, may seem tiresome, especially to non-Chinese readers, they have been
largely deleted in Western translations. Nevertheless, some Western critics have
considered it one of the world's finest novels. |
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In drama, the Ming tradition of ch'uan-ch'i
was worthily continued by several leading poets of the conventional school,
though as a whole their dramatic writings failed to appeal to the masses. Toward
the end of the 18th century, folk dramas of numerous localities began to gain
popularity, converging finally at the theatres of Peking and giving rise to what
came to be designated as Peking drama--a composite product that has continued to
delight large audiences in China. |
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By the early 19th century, China could
no longer ward off the West and, after the first Opium
War (1839-42), China's port cities were forcibly opened to increased
foreign contacts. In due course, many Western works on diverse subjects were
translated into Chinese. The quality of some of these was so outstanding that
they deserve a place in the history of Chinese literature. One distinguished
translator was Yen Fu, who had studied in Great
Britain and whose renderings of Western philosophical works into classical
Chinese were acclaimed as worthy of comparison, in literary merit, with the Chou
philosophers. Another great translator was Lin Shu,
who, knowing no foreign language himself but depending on oral interpreters,
made available to Chinese readers more than 170 Western novels, translated into
the literary style of Ssu-ma Ch'ien. |
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Meanwhile, writers of native fiction,
especially in central and southern China, began to be seriously influenced by
Western models. Using the vernacular and mostly following the picaresque romance
structure of the Ju-lin wai-shih, they
wrote fiction usually intended for serial publication and satirizing Chinese
society and culture. One of these writers was Liu E,
whose Lao Ts'an
yu-chi (1904-07; The Travels of
Lao Ts'an), a fictional account of contemporary life, pointed to the
problems confronting the tottering Ch'ing dynasty. |
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Poetry, long stagnant, at last began to
free itself from the shackles of traditionalism. The most prominent poet, Huang
Tsun-hsien, inspired by folk songs and foreign travel, tried to write
poetry in the spoken language and experimented with new themes, new diction, and
new rhythm. His young friend Liang Ch'i-ch'ao
not only fervently supported Huang and his associates in what they called
"the revolution in Chinese poetry" but also ventured forth in new
directions in prose. Liang's periodical publications, especially, exerted an
extensive influence on the Chinese people in the early years of the 20th
century. Fusing all the unique and attractive features of the various schools of
prose writing of the past into a new compound, Liang achieved a vibrant and
widely imitated style of his own, distinguished by several characteristics:
flexibility in sentence structure so that new terms, transliterations of foreign
words and phrases, and even colloquial expressions could be accommodated; a
natural liveliness; a touch of infectious emotionalism, which the majority of
his readers enjoyed. Although he was too cautious to use the vernacular, except
in fiction and plays, he did attempt to approximate the living speech of the
people, as Huang Tsun-hsien had done in poetry. |
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As part of a westernization movement,
the competitive literary examination system, which had been directly responsible
for excessive conservatism and conventionality in thought as well as in
literature, was abolished in 1905. ( T.-y.L./W.H.N.) |
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Following the overthrow of the Manchu
dynasty and the establishment of the Republic in 1912, many young intellectuals
turned their attention to the overhauling of literary traditions, beginning with
the language itself. In January 1917 an article by Hu Shih, a student of philosophy at Columbia University, entitled "Wen-hsüeh
kai-liang ch'u-i" ("Tentative Proposal for Literary
Reform") was published in the Peking magazine Hsin
ch'ing-nien (New Youth).
In it Hu called for a new national literature written not in the classical
language but in the vernacular, the living "national language" (kuo-yü). Ch'en Tu-hsiu, the
editor of Hsin ch'ing-nien, supported
Hu's views in his own article "Wen-hsüeh ko-ming lun" ("On
Literary Revolution"), which emboldened Hu to hone his arguments further in
a second article (1918), entitled "Chien-she te wen-hsüeh
ko-ming" ("Constructive Literary Revolution"), in which he
spelled out his formula for a "literary renaissance." The literary
reform movement that began with these and other "calls to arms" was a
part of the larger May Fourth Movement for
cultural and sociopolitical reform, whose name commemorates a 1919 student
protest against the intellectual performance of the Chinese delegates to the
Paris Peace Conference formally terminating World War I. At the outset, the
literary reformers met with impassioned but mostly futile opposition from
classical literati such as the renowned translator Lin Shu, who would largely
give up the battle within a few years. |
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The first fruits of this movement were
seen in 1918 and 1919 with the appearance in Hsin
ch'ing-nien of such stories as "K'uang-jen jih-chi" ("The
Diary of a Madman"), a Gogol-inspired piece about a "madman" who
suspects that he alone is sane and the rest of the world is mad, and
"Yao" ("Medicine"), both by Chou Shu-jen. Known by the
pseudonym Lu Hsün, Chou had studied in
Japan and, with his younger brother, the noted essayist Chou Tso-jen, had become
a leader of the literary revolution soon after returning to China. Lu Hsün's
acerbic, somewhat westernized, and often satirical attacks on China's
feudalistic traditions established him as China's foremost critic and writer.
His "Ah Q cheng-chuan" (1921;
"The True Story of Ah Q"), a damning critique of early 20th-century
conservatism in China, is the representative work of the May Fourth period and
has become an international classic. |
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These early writings provided the
impetus for a number of youthful intellectuals to pool their resources and
promote shared ideals by forming literary associations. The Wen-hsüeh
yen-chiu hui ("Literary Research Association"), generally referred to
as the "realist" or "art-for-life's-sake" school, assumed
the editorship of the established literary magazine Hsiao-shuo yüeh-pao (Short
Story Monthly), in which most major fiction writers published their works
throughout the 1920s, until the magazine's headquarters was destroyed by
Japanese bombs in 1932. The socially reflective, critical-realist writing that
characterized this group held sway in China well into the 1940s, when it was
gradually eclipsed by more didactic, propagandistic literature. Members of the
smaller Ch'uang-tsao she ("Creation Society"),
on the other hand, were followers of the "Romantic" tradition who
eschewed any expressions of social responsibility by writers, referring to their
work as "art for art's sake." In 1924, however, the society's leading
figure, Kuo Mo-jo, converted to Marxism, and the
Creation Society evolved into China's first Marxist literary society. Much of
the energy of members of both associations was expended in translating
literature of other cultures, which largely replaced traditional Chinese
literature as the foundation upon which the new writing was built. This was
particularly true in drama and poetry, in which figures such as Henrik Ibsen and
Rabindranath Tagore, respectively, were as well known to Chinese readers as
indigenous playwrights and poets. In drama, the Nan-kuo she ("South China
Society"), founded by the former Creationist T'ien Han, produced and
performed several short plays that were a mixture of critical realism and
melodrama, while poets of the Hsin-yüeh she ("Crescent Moon
Society") such as the British-educated Hsü
Chih-mo and the American-educated Wen I-to were creating new forms based
on Western models, introducing the beauty of music and colour into their
extremely popular lyrical verse. |
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Political events of the mid-1920s, in
which Nationalist, Communist, and warlord forces clashed frequently, initiated a
shift to the left in Chinese letters, culminating in 1930 in the founding of the
Tso-i tso-chia lien-meng ("League of Leftist Writers"), whose
membership included most influential writers. Lu Hsün, the prime organizer
and titular head throughout the league's half-decade of activities, had stopped
writing fiction in late 1925 and, after moving from Peking to Shanghai in 1927,
directed most of his creative energies to translating Russian literature and
writing the bitingly satirical random essays (tsa-wen) that became his trademark. Among the many active prewar
novelists, the most successful were Mao Tun, Lao She, and Pa Chin. |
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Mao Tun,
a founder of the Literary Research Association, was the prototypical Realist.
The subjects of his socially mimetic tableaux included pre-May Fourth urban
intellectual circles, bankrupt rural villages, and, in perhaps his best known
work, Tzu-yeh
(1933; Midnight), metropolitan Shanghai in all its financial and social
chaos during the post-Depression era. |
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Lao She,
modern China's foremost humorist, whose early novels were written while he was
teaching Chinese in London, was deeply influenced by traditional Chinese
storytellers and the novels of Charles Dickens. His works are known for their
episodic structure, racy northern dialect, vivid characterizations, and abundant
humour. Yet it was left to him to write modern China's classic novel, the moving
tale of the gradual degeneration of a seemingly incorruptible denizen of China's
"lower depths"--Lo-t'o hsiang-tzu (1936; "Camel
Hsiang-tzu," published in English in a bowdlerized translation as Rickshaw
Boy, 1945). |
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Pa Chin,
a prominent Anarchist, was the most popular novelist of the period. A prolific
writer, he is known primarily for his autobiographical novel Chia
(1931; The Family), which traces the lives and varied fortunes of the three
sons of a wealthy, powerful family. The book is a revealing portrait of China's
oppressive patriarchal society, as well as of the awakening of China's youth to
the urgent need for social revolution. |
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The 1930s also witnessed the meteoric
rise of a group of novelists from Northeast China (Manchuria) who were driven
south by the Japanese annexation of their homeland in 1932. The sometimes
rousing, sometimes nostalgic novels of Hsiao Chün and Hsiao Hung and the
powerful short stories of Tuan-mu Hung-liang
became rallying cries for anti-Japanese youth as signs of impending war mounted. |
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Poetry of the 1930s underwent a similar
politicization, as more and more students returned from overseas to place their
pens in the service of the "people's resistance against feudalism and
imperialism." The lyrical verse of the early Crescent Moon poets was
replaced by a more socially conscious poetry by the likes of Ai Ch'ing, T'ien
Chien, and Tsang K'o-chia that appealed to the readers' patriotic fervour.
Others, particularly those who had at first gravitated toward the Crescent Moon
Society, began striking out in various directions: notable works of these
authors include the contemplative sonnets of Feng Chih, the urbane songs of
Peking by Pien Chih-lin, and the romantic verses of Ho Ch'i-fang. Less popular,
but more daring, were Tai Wang-shu and Li Chin-fa, poets of the Hsien-tai
("Contemporary Age") group, who wrote very sophisticated, if
frequently baffling, poetry in the manner of the French Symbolists. |
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While fiction reigned supreme in the
1930s, as the art of the short story was mastered by growing numbers of May
Fourth writers, and novels were coming into their own, the most spectacular
advances were made in drama, owing largely to the efforts of a single
playwright. Although realistic social drama written in the vernacular had made
its appearance in China long before the 1930s, primarily as translations or
adaptations of Western works, it did not gain a foothold on the popular stage
until the arrival of Ts'ao Yü, whose first
play, Lei-yü (1934; Thunderstorm), a tale of fatalism, retribution, and incestual
relations among members of a rich industrialist's family, met with phenomenal
success. It was followed over the next several years by other critically and
popularly acclaimed plays, including Jih-ch'u
(1936; Sunrise) and Yüan-yeh
(1937; Wilderness), all of which examined pressing social issues and
universal human frailties with gripping tension and innovative dramaturgy.
Political realities in future decades would force a steady decline in dramatic
art, so that Ts'ao Yü's half-dozen major productions still stand as the
high-water mark of modern Chinese theatre. Yet, even though movies, television,
and other popular entertainments would weaken the resiliency of this literary
form, it would still serve the nation as an effective propaganda medium,
particularly during the war of resistance. |
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During the Sino-Japanese War, most
writers fled to the interior, where they contributed to the war effort by
writing patriotic literature under the banner of the Chung-hua ch'üan-kuo
wen-i chieh k'ang-ti hsieh-hui ("All-China Anti-Japanese Federation of
Writers and Artists"), founded in 1938 and directed by Lao She. All genres
were represented, including reportage (pao-kao
wen-hsüeh), an enormously influential type of writing that was a
natural outgrowth of the federation's call for writers to go to the countryside
and the front lines. Literary magazines were filled with short, easily produced
and adaptable plays, topical patriotic verse, and war-zone dispatches. Among the
major writers who continued to produce work of high quality during this period
were Pa Chin, Ts'ao Yü, Mao Tun, and Ting Ling.
The latter's fictional explorations of the female psyche and the social
condition of women had caught the public's imagination in the 1920s, and in the
late 1930s she established herself as the major literary figure in the Communist
stronghold of Yen-an. |
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The growing dissatisfaction of
intellectuals with the Nationalist government in Chungking surfaced dramatically
during the civil war that raged throughout China following Japan's surrender,
ending with the Nationalists' retreat to Taiwan and the establishment, in
October 1949, of the People's Republic of China. Most writers, feeling intense
pride and welcoming the challenge, chose to remain on the mainland and serve the
new government. |
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Literature on the China mainland since
1949 has largely been a reflection of political campaigns and ideological
battles. This state of affairs can be traced to Mao
Tse-tung's 1942 "Tsai Yen-an wen-i tso-t'an-hui shang te
chiang-hua" ("Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art"),
in which he articulated his position that literature, which existed to serve
politics, was to be popularized while the people's level of literary
appreciation was gradually being elevated. Mao's call for a truly proletarian
literature--written by and for workers, peasants, and soldiers--gave rise to a
series of rectification campaigns that further defined and consolidated party
control over literary activities. In 1949, the First National Congress of
Writers and Artists was convened, and the All-China Federation of Literature and
Art Circles was founded, with Kuo Mo-jo elected as its first chairman. |
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Mao's literary ideals had first been
realized in the 1940s by Chao Shu-li, whose early stories, such as "Li
Yu-ts'ai pan-hua" ("The Rhymes of Li Yu-ts'ai"), were models of
proletarian literature, both in form and in content. As the civil war neared its
conclusion, novels of land reform, such as Ting Ling's prizewinning T'ai-yang
chao tsai Sang-kan-ho shang (1949; The
Sun Shines over the Sangkan River) and Pao-feng
tsou-yü (1949; The Hurricane) by Chou Li-po, became quite popular. Few of the
established May Fourth writers continued to produce fiction after 1949, for
their experience as social critics did not prepare them for Socialist
Realism, a method of composition, borrowed from the Soviet Union,
according to which society is described as it should be, not necessarily as it
is. Many of the older poets, however, were successful during the early
postliberation years, writing poetry in praise of land reform, modernization,
and Chinese heroes of the Korean War. Playwrights were also active, introducing
more proletarian themes into their works, some of which incorporated music. By
this time, Lao She had begun writing plays, such as Lung-hsü
kou (1951; Dragon Beard Ditch), which earned him the prestigious title of
People's Artist. Another very popular play, Pai-mao
nü; (1953; White-Haired Girl) by Ho Ching-chih, was taken from a contemporary
folk legend. |
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During the mid-1950s, an experiment in
liberalization--the Hundred Flowers Campaign--was
abruptly terminated as criticism of the party went beyond all expectations; it
was followed by an anti-rightist movement that purged the cultural ranks of most
preliberation writers and artists. The literary nadir, however, was not reached
until the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), when
the only literature available were a few carefully screened works by Lu
Hsün, a handful of model revolutionary Peking operas, and the
revolutionary-romantic novels of Hao Jan. After the death of Mao and the fall of
the Gang of Four, literature made a comeback and most surviving writers were
rehabilitated, although the progress was as rocky as the political scene Chinese
literature continued to reflect. |
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The accusatory "scar
literature," a sort of national catharsis that immediately followed the
10-year "holocaust," gave way to more professional and more daring
writing, as exemplified in the stories of Wang Meng, with their stylistic
experiments in stream of consciousness; the symbolic "obscure" poetry
of Pei Tao and others; the relatively bold dramas, both for the stage and for
the screen, of several playwrights; and the innovative investigative reportage
of Liu Pin-yen. In addition to translated literature from the West, literature
from Taiwan also began to reach mainland writers and readers as literary
restrictions continued to fall gradually. (see also
dramatic literature) |
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The first decade of literary activities
in Taiwan after 1949 was characterized by stereotypical anti-Communist fiction
and drippingly sentimental essays and poetry, producing little memorable
literature other than novels such as Yang-ko
(1954; The Rice-Sprout Song) by Chang
Ai-ling, a story of peasant life under Communist rule, and Hsüan-feng
(1959; The Whirlwind), Chiang Kuei's
novel of power struggles in Shantung. In the 1960s, however, a group of Taiwan
University students ushered in the modernist era by publishing their own
craftsmanlike stories, which were heavily indebted to such Western masters as
Franz Kafka, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. Many of these writers, such as Pai
Hsien-yung, author of Yu-yüan
ching-meng (1982; Wandering in the
Garden, Waking from a Dream), remained active and influential in the
mid-1980s. Vernacular poetry in Taiwan developed around several societies in
which modernist, even surrealist, verse was in vogue. These poets, while not
widely accepted by the reading public, strongly influenced the more accessible
poets who followed. The late 1960s witnessed the rise of regional (hsiang-t'u)
writing, in which the Taiwanese countryside served as the setting for fiction
and poetry that effectively captured the dramatic social and psychological
effects of transition from a rural to an urban-based society. Huang Ch'un-ming's
Ni-szu i-chih lao-mao (1980; The
Drowning of an Old Cat) is representative of this nativist school, which in
later years gave way to a more nationalistic literature that reflected Taiwan's
current political situation. Mainland literature occasionally appears in
Taiwanese periodicals, while firsthand experiences and observations by mainland
émigrés and overseas Chinese, such as the collection of stories Yin
hsien-chang (1976; The Execution of
Mayor Yin) by Ch'en Jo-hsi, are given broad exposure. (see also
pai-hua) |
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(H.C.G.) |
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BIBLIOGRAPHY |
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KARL LO, A Guide to the Ssu pu ts'ung k'an: Being an Index to Authors, Titles,
and Subjects (1965); HU SHIH, Pai-hua
wen-hsüeh shih ("History of Vernacular Literature," 1929);
WU-CHI LIU, An Introduction to Chinese
Literature (1966, reprinted 1967); YUANJUN FENG, An Outline History of Classical Chinese Literature, trans. by XIANYI
YANG and GLADYS YANG (1983); BURTON WATSON, Early Chinese Literature (1962); PATRICK HANAN, The
Chinese Vernacular Story (1981); C.T. HSIA, The
Classic Chinese Novel: A Critical Introduction (1968, reissued 1980); COLIN
MACKERRAS (ed.), Chinese Theater: From Its
Origins to the Present Day (1983), a collection of essays on various eras
and genres of traditional drama, its performance, and its audience; WILLIAM H.
NIENHAUSER, JR. (ed.), Indiana Companion
to Traditional Chinese Literature (1985), containing essays and entries with
extensive bibliographies on all aspects of traditional Chinese literature;
translations by ARTHUR WALEY and BURTON WATSON, too numerous to be listed;
WU-CHI LIU and IRVING YUCHENG LO (eds.), Sunflower
Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry (1975, reprinted 1977), the
most extensive collection of translations; Y.W. MA and JOSEPH S.M. LAU (eds.), Traditional
Chinese Stories: Themes and Variations (1978), the standard collection of
translations; EUGEN FEIFEL (ed. and trans.), Geschichte
der chinesischen Literatur: Mit Berücksichtigung ihres
geistesgeschichtlichen Hintergrundes, 3rd ed. (1967); GEORGES MARGOULIÈS,
Évolution de la prose artistique chinoise (1929), Histoire
de la littérature chinoise: prose (1949), and Histoire
de la littérature chinoise: poésie (1951); DERK BODDE,
"Myths of Ancient China," in SAMUEL NOAH KRAMER (ed.), Mythologies
of the Ancient World, pp. 367-408 (1961), a good critical introduction but
limited to five classical myths; and WOLFGANG MÜNKE, Die klassische chinesische
Mythologie (1976). |
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All the works mentioned in this section
of the article are available in English translation and can be located in DONALD
A. GIBBS and YUN-CHEN LI, A Bibliography
of Studies and Translations of Modern Chinese Literature, 1918-1942 (1975);
and WINSTON L.Y. YANG and NATHAN K. MAO (eds.), Modern Chinese Fiction: A Guide to Its Study and Appreciation: Essays
and Bibliographies (1981). The most useful historical works are TSE-TSUNG
CHOU, The May Fourth Movement:
Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (1960, reissued 1967); C.T. HSIA, A
History of Modern Chinese Fiction, 2nd ed. (1971); D.W. FOKKEMA, Literary
Doctrine in China and Soviet Influence, 1956-1960 (1965); and MERLE GOLDMAN,
Literary Dissent in Communist China (1967,
reissued 1971). Synopses of representative works are given in JOSEPH SCHYNS, 1500
Modern Chinese Novels & Plays (1948, reissued 1970); and MEISHI TSAI, Contemporary Chinese Novels and Short Stories, 1949-1974: An Annotated
Bibliography (1979). Poetry is treated in KAI-YU HSU (ed. and trans.), Twentieth
Century Chinese Poetry: An Anthology (1963, reissued 1970); and ANGELA C.Y.
JUNG PALANDRI (ed. and trans.), Modern
Verse from Taiwan (1972). The best anthologies of translated literature are
JOSEPH S.M. LAU, C.T. HSIA, and LEO OU-FAN LEE (eds.), Modern
Chinese Stories and Novellas, 1919-1949 (1981); JOSEPH S.M. LAU (ed.), The
Unbroken Chain: An Anthology of Taiwan Fiction Since 1926 (1983); KAI-YU HSU
(ed.), Literature of the People's Republic of China (1979); PERRY LINK
(ed.), Roses and Thorns: The Second
Blooming of the Hundred Flowers in Chinese Fiction, 1979-1980 (1984); and
EDWARD M. GUNN (ed.), Twentieth-Century
Chinese Drama: An Anthology (1983). |
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(W.H.N./H.C.G.) |
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