Chinese Literature

Classical Works

Many Classics of early Chinese literature were produced during the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, which lasted from 770 to 256 BCE. Important prose writings in the areas of Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism and Legalism accompanied by pieces on military science and Chinese history were produced during this time. Most, if not all, of these prose works were philosophical in nature and, though they may use elements of storytelling, were not works of fiction.

Classical poetry became prominent in the years of the Tang dynasty (CE 618-907), and is subsequently called, Tang poetry. The most popular poetry form was the Iushi, which is an eight-line poem that has five to seven words per line. Other popular poetry forms were Zi, a strict verse style, and jueju, which is a four-line with five or seven words in each. Out of the Tang period came the use of narration, which the poet Bai Juyi mastered while critiquing the society of his time.

Modern Literature

The origins of modern Chinese literature can be found in the Qing period (1895-1911). This period was marked by crisis in the collective conscious of the Chinese people. Artists and philosophers began to look beyond traditional thought in order to solve domestic problems. During this time there was a large influx of Western writings being translated into Chinese. Due to these conditions, in 1905, a large movement of fiction writers began.

Starting in 1949, the Communist Party began to nationalize China’s publishing industry, as well as consolidating writers into a controllable entity, the Writers Union. An era of censorship began that blacklisted writers who did not adhere to party standards. The promoted style of the Communist era was socialist realism. This style was limiting to the writers of the time because it denied the use of social satire, surrealism, and other so-called “bourgeois” artistic styles. During the 1950s, Mao Zedong began the Hundred Flowers Campaign to promote writers to publish works that were critical of their current society. Many works of journalism, fiction and film were produced that focused on the problems of authoritarianism and bureaucratism within the Communist Party. Mao then used these works to attack the “Rightist” intellectuals who created them.

The literature of the contemporary era tends to focus on the discordance of power during the Cultural Revolution, such as Moa’s Hundred Flowers Campaign. Due to the sympathetic nature of these writings, they have been dubbed “the literature of the wounded.”

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