Transcript 03_VolA_Intro_Early_Chinese_Lit

Early Chinese Literature
and Thought (Volume A)
China
• oldest surviving
civilization
• regional identity
versus culturalpolitical unity
• military elites
• sage rulers (Fu Xi)
• Yellow River
Huangdi and Fu Xi
China: Bronze Age
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Shang Dynasty
bone divination
ancestor worship
3,200-year history
logographic
“brush talk”
Zhou Conquest and Decline
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agrarian
“Heaven”
mandate
King Wen, King Wu
separation into
eastern and western
Eastern Zhou
• Spring, Autumn
Annals Period
• Warring States Period
• new diplomacy
• military technology
advance
• end of old aristocracy
• Confucius
Master’s Literature
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Confucians
Mohists
Daoists
Logicians
Legalists
Yin-Yang Masters
Confucius
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moral education
analects
Daoism
Classic of Poetry
“think no evil”
“poor yet cheerful,
rich yet considerate”
Zhuangzi
• Daoism
• anecdote
• dangers of
persuasion
• necessity of language
Qu Yuan, Imperial China
• “Encountering
Sorrow”
• Qin
• poor character, strong
military
• 221 B.C.E.
• central bureaucracy
Han Feizi
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Legalist
veneration of the written word
oral persuasion
applicable knowledge
“The difficult thing about persuasion is to
know the mind of the person one is trying
to persuade and to be able to fit one’s
words to it” (p. 1428).
Qin Burning of Books
• 213 B.C.E.
• intellectual
disagreement
• practical manuals
Han Dynasty
• Emperor Wu
• campaigning
• Five Classics: Classic
of Changes, Classic
of Documents,
Classic of Poetry,
Spring and Autumn
Annals, Record of
Rites
• Sima Qian, history
The Emergence of Unified China
The Han Empire
Test Your Knowledge
What was the ancient Chinese Classic of
Changes (the I Ching)?
a. a farming text
b. a divination text
c. a history
d. an early poetry anthology
Test Your Knowledge
The earliest Chinese writing used characters
that looked like: ___________ .
a. the Phoenician alphabet
b. hieroglyphs
c. bird and animal tracks
d. elements like water, fire. and air
Test Your Knowledge
The “Mandate from Heaven” was a way
justifying which of the following?
a. the correctness of one philosophy over
another
b. the importance of military rule
c. changes in crop yield from year to year
d. shifts in power from one dynasty to
another
Test Your Knowledge
What was “Masters Literature”?
a. collections of great dramatic works
b. collections of philosophical texts
c. historical court records
d. military strategy guides
This concludes the Lecture
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