Early Chinese Literatureand Thought (Volume A)

China

• oldest surviving civilization

• regional identity versus cultural-political unity

• military elites• sage rulers (Fu Xi)• Yellow River

Huangdi and Fu Xi

China: Bronze Age

• Shang Dynasty• bone divination• ancestor worship• 3,200-year history• logographic• “brush talk”

Zhou Conquest and Decline

• 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

• Confucians

• Mohists

• Daoists

• Logicians

• Legalists

• Yin-Yang Masters

Master’s Literature

Confucius

• 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

• 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).

Han Feizi

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

What was the ancient Chinese Classic of Changes (the I Ching)?

a. a farming textb. a divination textc. a historyd. an early poetry anthology

Test Your Knowledge

The earliest Chinese writing used characters that looked like: ___________ .

a. the Phoenician alphabetb. hieroglyphsc. bird and animal tracksd. 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 anotherb. the importance of military rulec. changes in crop yield from year to yeard. shifts in power from one dynasty to another

Test Your Knowledge

What was “Masters Literature”?

a. collections of great dramatic worksb. collections of philosophical textsc. historical court recordsd. military strategy guides

Test Your Knowledge

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