China: Notable Writers (and their Most Famous Works and Notable Biographical Information and Information about their Works) and Literary Terms and Concepts (inc. Genres)

1000’s BCE - 600’s BCE - Shi Jing / Book of Songs (All Facts)

• Collection of ancient Chinese poems

• Some of its most archaic verses came from the sacrificial hymns used in the ancestral temples of the Shang Dynasty

• Some of its verses from later written work range from court love poetry to peasant folk-songs

• Was essential reading for the education Chinese, particularly for those involved in political life

• Quotations from its verses became common currency in the complicated political world of the feudal states China was divided into

• Included dynastic hymns which described elaborate ceremonies in the temples of the royal clans, folk songs which recorded peasant festival, complaints from soldiers at the frontlines, and love songs for the “spring matchmaking games”

274 BCE - Ch’u Tz’u / Songs of Ch’u (All Facts)

• Collection of poems

• Compiled in the namesake principality in the basin of the Yangtze River

339 BCE - 278 BCE - Ch’u Yuan (All Facts)

• Chinese poet and aristocrat that lived and worked in the Chu State during the Warring States Period of the Zhou Dynasty

• Many of his works are featured in the Ch’u Tz’u or “Songs of Ch’u”

• Was renowned for the lyric beauty of his poetry

• His brilliance, however, aroused jealousy among less-gifted men and a campaign was mounted against him by fellow poets

  • The slanders against him were believed and he, in disgrace, committed suicide

239 BCE - Master Lu’s Spring and Autumn Annals (All Facts)

• Work of a team of scholars who were brought together to summarize all their knowledge from statecraft to philosophy and from agriculture to music

• One of the longest early Chinese texts at over 100,000 words

145 BCE - 86 BCE - Sima Qian (All Facts)

• Chinese Historian during the Han Dynasty

• Completed a historical record known as the Shiji

  • Was around 500K words long

  • Established a new form of writing

• Castrated by the emperor for sponsoring the cause of Li Ling, the disgraced general, and extolling his exploits

32 CE - 92 CE - Ban Gu (All Facts)

• Chinese Historian during the Han Dynasty

• Known for his “Book of Han,” a compilation of the history of the (former) Han Dynasty he had made alongside his father and sister, it is the 2nd of the 24 known dynastic histories of China

• He was executed for having supported the Dou faction at court

45 - 120 - Ban Zhao (All Facts)

• Chinese Polymath who was a historian, poet, and writer during the Han Dynasty

• She was an outstanding model for the women of her time

• She was known for her work “Lessons for Women,” an influential book on morality

• She died after an arduous journey to be with her son, a provincial magistrate

• She was the sister of Ban Gu, who was executed for having supported the Dou faction in the imperial court of the Han Dynasty 

132 - 192 - Cai Yong (All Facts) 

• Chinese Polymath who was a historian, writer, and calligrapher during the Han Dynasty 

• He was granted permission by the Emperor at the time to produce a standard version of the six classics of Confucianism, with the aim to remove the errors which had gradually crept into the classics 

  • To do this, he gathered a team of scholars and engravers and and collated (correctly ordered) the many versions of the Confucian classics

303 - 361 - Wang Xizhi (All Facts)

• Chinese Calligrapher during the Jin Dynasty

• He was one of the inventors of “Cao Shu,” a cursive type of handwriting, elegantly elongated, which broke with the former rigid Han style

Cao Shu (All Facts)

• Cursive type of handwriting that was elegantly elongated

• It was developed by Wang Xizhi during the Jin Dynasty and broke with the previous rigid style of the Han Dynasty

505 - 531 - Xiao Tong (All Facts)

• Prince of the Liang Dynasty and elder son of the Liang Emperor

• He was better known for his work “Wen Xuan”

505 - 531 - Xiao Tong: Wen Xuan (All Facts)

• Anthology of Chinese poetry and literatures (of the past 500 years since it was published)

• One of the world's oldest literary anthologies to be arranged by topic

Yan Shigu (All Facts)

• Commissioned by Emperor Taizong of Tang to contribute to and publish the “Correct meaning of the five classics”

Kong Yingda (All Facts)

• Commissioned by Emperor Taizong of Tang to contribute to and publish the “Correct meaning of the five classics”

Tang Poetry (All Facts)

• 49K poems survive from this golden age of Chinese poetry

699 - 761 - Wang Wei (All Facts)

• Chinese Poet (and Painter) during the Tang Dynasty

• He wrote about nature

• His predominant form of poetry was the strict 8-line “shih”

701 - 762 - Li Bai (All Facts)

• Chinese Poet during the Tang Dynasty and the Tang Golden Age of Poetry

  • He wrote about wine and companionship

• His poetry is full of fantasy and reflected the dashing image of his carefully cultivated personality

  • He surrounded himself with convivial companions and lived life to the fullest

• Upon achieving fame, he visited the capital of the Tang Dynasty where he was introduced to Emperor Xuanzong as a “banished immortal” and was made court poet for the Emperor

  • He fell foul of Yang Guifei, the Emperor’s concubine, and was banished as a result

• He was imprisoned for his involvement in the Prince of Yong’s attempt to seize power

  • He lived to the end of his days in exile, dying as outrageously as he lived

• He died of drowning while drunkenly trying to capture the reflection of the moon in the waters of the Yangtze River

  • His death in this fashion is unsurprising considering that he loved wine and had an eccentric personality

712 - 770 - Du Fu (All Facts)

• Chinese Poet during the Tang Dynasty and the Tang Golden Age of Poetry

• His poetry embraced a great breadth of sympathies and his own life mirrored the sudden change from prosperity to uncertainty in his poetry throughout his lifetime, brought about by the An Lushan Revolt

• He showed his mastery of imagery in such lines as “Blue is the smoke of war, white the bones of men”

• He died alone, possibly of malnutrition

768 - 824 - Han Yu (All Facts)

• Chinese Writer, Poet, Confucian scholar, government official during the Tang dynasty

• He significantly influenced the development of Neo-Confucianism

• He was famous for his style of prose

• He failed his civil service exams and was forced to take a post on the staff of a provincial military governor

• He was exiled to China for five years for his work condemning Emperor Xianzong’s actions, but when he returned, he was given a number of official posts

• He gathered round him a group of intellectuals and honed the clarity of his prose and poetic style until his genius was recognized throughout China

• He was leader of Changan, the Tang capital, when he died

768 - 824 - Han Yu: Memorial on the Bone-Relic of the Buddha (All Facts)

• Work in which the author attacks Emperor Xianzong’s worship of a Buddhist relic

• Work which put the namesake author in considerable danger as the Emperor Xianzong was furious with him for writing it, but the namesake author was saved from being put to death by the intervention of powerful patrons at court

800s - 881 - Lu Xie (All Facts)

• Scholar during the Tang Dynasty

• He was bold enough to present a memorial to Emperor Xizong of Tang, which painted in relentless detail the picture of the crisis which had been building in Tang China up to his reign

• His account of the people’s privations impressed Emperor Xizong so much so that he issued an imperial relief edict to provide help for the peasants

Tzu Poets (All Facts)

• Poets like Li Yu which adapted the irregular structure and colloquial language of Chinese folk verse, usually sung to a tune

961 - 978 - Li Yu (All Facts)

• Poet during the southern Tang Dynasty, of which he ruled until its fall to the Song Dynasty, ending the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period of China

• He was remembered not as a failed emperor, but as the master of the “Ci” (lyric) style of poetry

  • Originally the poetry of the teahouse, it was often trivial, but the namesake turned his captivity as a result of his deposition by the Song into a medium of self-expression

• In his poetry in this unique style, he examined the downfall of his dynasty, filled with sorrow and nostalgia

  • He was one of the “Tzu Poets”

1037 - 1101 - Su Shih (All Facts)

• He widened the subject matter of Tzu (song form) poetry and introduced vernacular words, thus contributing to Yan “Drama” which resembled opera

998 - 1061 - Sung Chi (All Facts)

• Collaborated with Ou-Yang Hsiu on a Confucian history

1007 - 1072 - Ou-Yang Hsiu (All Facts)

• Collaborated with Sung Chi on a Confucian history

1019 - 1086 - Sima Guang (All Facts)

• Chinese Statesman, Writer, and Historian

• He is most famous for his work “the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government,” an epic history of China that makes a “record of events, of rulers, and ministers in successive ages”

  • He was helped by several dedicated assistants whom he urged to consult every type of source, for, he argued, official records and histories “are not necessarily to be relied upon and anecdotes are not necessarily without foundation. Make your choice by your own scrutiny”

  • He was able to complete this great work because of a political defeat, after he was sent into exile as a conservative due to the reformer Wang Anshi, but was allowed to take his library with him

1021 - 1086 - Wang Anshi (All Facts)

• Chinese Poet

• He campaigned to stem widespread corruption in the administration and army of the Song Dynasty

1271 - 1368 - Zaju (All Facts)

• Genre of Chinese Drama that drew on poetry and was accompanied by music that was developed and popularized during the Yuan Dynasty

• Genre of Chinese Drama in which

  • Actors and actresses mimed, sang, and played instruments and danced as much as they spoke their lines

  • passages were sung by the leading actor or actress, which were then linked by dialogue which narrated the story

  • themes included legends and popular tales, having often introduced satire about their Mongol overlords and their brutal methods

  • themes included escapist fantasies of sexual love and the supernatural

  • on every entrance, other characters introduced themselves to the audience, for the style was nonrealistic

• Under the Yuan Dynasty, this genre developed as its producers became free of the constraints of censorship and Confucianism, and learned to explore the stage with an atmosphere of imaginative invention

  • At the time, there were around 100 different Yuan dramatists and hundreds more plays being performed, especially in Dadu (modern-day Beijing)