Classical Chinese Literature and Poetry

Classical Chinese literature and poetry (中国古典文学) produced one of the world's greatest literary traditions — spanning over three thousand years from the Oracle Bones to the Qing Dynasty novels, Chinese literature developed distinctive poetic forms, prose styles, and narrative techniques that express the full range of Chinese cultural, philosophical, and emotional life. From the Four Books and Five Classics of antiquity to the monumental novels of the Ming, Chinese literature has no equal in sustained creative achievement among the world's literary traditions.

The Classical Canon

The foundational texts of Chinese literature include: the "Five Classics" (五经) — the Confucian canon: the Book of Songs (诗经), Book of Documents (尚书), Book of Rites (礼记), Book of Changes (易经), and Spring and Autumn Annals (春秋); the "Four Books" (四书) — the Great Learning (大学), Doctrine of the Mean (中庸), Mencius (孟子), and Analects (论语); the "Chu ci" (楚辞) — the Songs of Chu, with Qu Yuan's elegies; the "Shiji" (史记) — Sima Qian's Grand Scribe's Records, the model of historiographical prose; the "Jin Ping Mei" (金瓶梅) — the 16th-century novel of Ming society; the "four great classical novels" (四大名著) — Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国演义), Water Margin (水浒传), Journey to the West (西游记), and Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦); the "Zhuangzi" (庄子) — the Daoist philosophical text with parables and wild imagination; and the "Liu Yuxi" (刘禹锡) and "Han Yu" (韩愈) — masters of tang prose.

Poetry: The Central Art Form

Chinese poetry achieved unsurpassed heights: the "Shijing" (诗经) — the 305 Songs from the 11th–7th centuries BCE, the model of directness and simplicity; the "Chuci" (楚辞) — the lyrical and mythological poetry of the southern Chu tradition; the "Yuefu" (乐府) — folk-style poems set to music; the "Five-character quatrain" (五言绝句) — the jueju of four lines, five characters each; the "Seven-character quatrain" (七言绝句) — the more expansive jueju form; the "regulated verse" (律诗) — the lüshi eight-line form with tonal parallelism; the "Li Bai" (李白) — the "immortal poet" of romantic transcendence and cosmic vision; the "Du Fu" (杜甫) — the "poet-historian" of suffering and social conscience; the "Bai Juyi" (白居易) — the master of accessible, widely read poetry; the "Su Dongpo" (苏轼) — poet, essayist, painter, and the most versatile literary genius; the "Li Qingzhao" (李清照) — the greatest female poet, with delicate lyrics of love and loss; the "ci poetry" (词) — the lyric song-form with variable line lengths; and the "shi poetry" (诗) — the shi forms dominating for centuries. Poetry was the supreme art form of the Chinese educated class.

Prose and Fiction

Prose and fiction genres include: the "zhuan ti wen" (传记文) — biographical and anecdotal prose; the "fu" (赋) — the rhymed-prose genre of ornate description; the "notes and letters" (笔记书信) — casual essays and correspondence; the "short stories" (笔记小说) — the zhiguai and chuanqi traditions of supernatural tales; the "wenyan prose" (文言文) — the classical written language used for formal literature; the "baihua" (白话) — the vernacular language of later fiction; the "Dream of the Red Chamber" (红楼梦) — Cao Xueqin's 18th-century masterpiece of family decline and human condition; the "pu Songling" (蒲松龄) — Liaozhai's 491 strange tales of the supernatural; the "fables" (寓言) — the genre established by the Zhuangzi; and the "literary criticism" (诗文评) — from the "Six Principles" of Liu Xie (文心雕龙) to the 18th-century "Dream of the Red Chamber" commentaries. Literature was both a cultivation of self and a vehicle for moral teaching.