The magnitude of traditional Chinese literature

Two days ago, I received a big package with three heavy books inside.  They were three copies of the following tome:

Routledge Handbook of Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. Victor H. Mair and Zhenjun Zhang (London:  Routledge, 2025), 742 pages.

It came as a surprise for, even though we had been working on the handbook for years, I had lost track of when it would actually be published.

Holding the printed and bound work in my hands, the sheer magnitude of what its pages contained began to sink in.

Publisher's description

This Handbook presents a comprehensive overview of 3,000 years of Chinese literature from its earliest beginnings to the end of the Qing (1644–1911), the last empire of China.

With a focus on well-known authors and masterpieces in each important genre, this volume covers verses, prose, drama, and fiction arranged in the following thematic groupings:

• • Pre-Qin and Han poetry, poetry of the Six Dynasties, poetry of the Tang, poetry of the Song, and lyrics of the Song
  • Prose of historians, prose of philosophers, and literati prose
  • Tragedy and romance in Yuan drama, southern plays of ethics, and chuanqi plays of the Ming and the Qing
  • Classical-language tales, vernacular short stories, heroic romances, novels of spirits and devils, novels of manners and satire, and novels of social exposure and prostitution

Featuring both introductions and in-depth analyses, this Handbook incorporates the most recent scholarly works for each entry and also facilitates future research by providing further readings.

Authored by a stellar line-up of experts in the field of Chinese literature, this is an essential reference guide for all students and scholars in the fields of Chinese literature and culture.

With more than fifty outstanding contributors, this handbook affords an ample idea of all the major genres of prose, poetry, fiction, and drama from premodern times.  I will be assigning it as an eBook in my prose and poetry course this fall semester.  It will dazzle the students with its wide selection of works that display the plenitude of literary genres and the cultural richness of China in times past.

 

Selected readings

• "Chinese, Greek, and Latin" (8/8/17)
• "The (alleged) untranslatability of Chinese poetry" (9/26/20)