These essays, by Chinese and Western scholars, treat selected aspects of Chinese literary theory, history, and criticism from the age of Confucius to the beginning of the twentieth-century.

The topics examined include Confucius as a literary critic (Donald Holzman); the view of ch'i, or vital force, as a decisive element in creative writing (David Pollard); the literary theories of the eleventh-century poet and essayist Ou-yang Hsiu (Yu-shih Chen) and his contemporary Huang T'ing-chien (Adele Rickett); and the seventeenth-century philosopher-poet Wang Fu-chih (Siu-kit Wong). Other essays consider the Ch'ang-chou School of the Ch'ing dynasty (Florence Chia-ying Yeh Chao); the distinctive methods of criticism applied to the Dream of the Red Chamber by the Chih-yen chai commentators (John Wang); and the educative function of fiction as outlined by Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and Yen Fu at the turn of the century (C.T. Hsia).

Originally published in 1978.

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