The Anatomy of Chinese Literature: Expository Study

This chapter examines how Sinologists described and explained the features and classification of Chinese literature, focusing on their responses to the epistemological challenge of adopting sources, terminology, narrative models, interpretive frameworks, and classification schemes to produce the basic knowledge about Chinese literature. Rather than offering a sweeping, exhaustive survey of all topics covered in Sinologists’ writings, this chapter identifies and analyses the most typical and recurring discussions on Chinese literature in English Sinology, including the ‘artificiality’ of Chinese prosody, empirical knowledge of Chinese drama, style and characterization in Chinese fiction, and the classification schemes of the three literary genres. Despite claims of objective and faithful observation, Sinologists’ description and explanation were never void of subjective biases. When Western literary concepts were employed, evaluative comparisons became unavoidable; as a result, what was intended as scientific knowledge about Chinese literature often ended up laden with conclusive assessments.