Chinese Literature: A Very Short Introduction by Sabina Knight

Chinese Literature: A Very Short Introduction Reviews

• 
  Justin Evans

  A surprisingly good little book. Every time I think I'm done with the VSI series, I find something like this. Knight tries to have a narrative; she deals with contemporary hot-buttons without letting said hot-buttons overwhelm the fact that a VSI has to actually, you know, introduce its subject matter rather than just complain about it; she deals with most of the books you've heard of and probably a few you haven't. Also, it's nicely written. I have no idea why people are complaining about it so; accusing a VSI of being superficial is like complaining about the OED being exhaustive.
  
  Two slight problems: the 'twentieth century' chapter is just a bunch of plot summaries, and of books that don't sound even remotely interesting. I wish she'd done the narrative thing here, too, because there's an obvious one: when literature is used to bolster idiotic ideologies (Maoism) or attack idiotic ideologies (Maoism), it's usually pretty boring. When it's used to bolster or criticize even remotely intelligent ideologies (Confucian traditionalism), on the other hand, literature can get pretty good.
  
  Also, there's just too much silly "unlike western poetry, which is obsessed with logic/reason/individualism/the self, Chinese poetry deals sensitively and subtly with intuition/emotion/other people/the universe." The Chinese tradition does a nice job dealing with these oppositions; to just say it goes to one side while 'the west' (which presumably borders 'the north'?) goes to the other does a disservice to everyone.
• 
  Vishy

  After reading 'Gateway to Chinese Classical Literature', I decided to read the Oxford VSI (Very Short Introduction) on the subject by Sabina Knight.
  
  Sabina Knight's book is divided into five chapters, each of which focuses on a different theme. The first one is on Chinese philosophical works, the second one is on poetry, the third one is on early prose works, the fourth one is on prose epics and drama, and the fifth one covers 20th and 21st century literature. The book starts slowly, and in the initial chapters the prose veers towards the academic, with sentences like this –
  
  "Sensitivity to these dynamics fostered awe for the potentials underlying natural dispositions, plus profound faith in human capacities to navigate these propensities."
  
  But the pace picks up by the third chapter and the book kicks ass after that. The book is just 120 pages long and can be read in a few hours, but the amount of information it packs is amazing.
  
  I loved most of the book, and the book's coverage of the Chinese prose epics and its analysis of classical Chinese poetry is brilliant. One of my favourite lines in the book is this one –
  
  "Scholars sometimes liken traditional novels to Chinese gardens and landscape painting, both of which encourage wandering rather than a single fixed perspective or presentation."
  
  It is a perfect depiction of all the major Chinese prose epics, which are complex and refuse to get pigeon-holed into restrictive themes and structures.
  
  Sabina Knight says this in the chapter on poetry – "Du Fu, arguably China's greatest poet..." It made me smile 😊 (I love Du Fu, but Li Bai was, is, and will always be, China's greatest poet. Sorry Sabina 😊)
  
  The last chapter in the book was fascinating, and was especially my favourite, because it featured many 20th and 21st century writers who were new to me. That is many exciting new writers waiting to be explored. I was disappointed that Jin Yong, the most popular Chinese writer of the 20th century, just gets a mention in one sentence, while 'Fortress Besieged', one of the greatest Chinese novels of the 20th century, doesn't even get a mention. But I was happy that two 20th century greats, Lu Xun and Ba Jin (both of whom should have won the Nobel Prize, in my opinion), both got good coverage. I was happy that Wei Hui and her controversial 'Shanghai Baby' were featured, and I was also excited that the book introduced me to many wonderful women Chinese writers, including Wang Anyi, Dai Houying, Zhang Jie and Yang Mo.
  
  This book is a great introduction to Chinese literature and a great companion read alongwith 'Gateway to Chinese Classical Literature'. These two books cover most of the same ground but in completely different styles and so they complement each other perfectly. Sabina Knight's book is not always easy going, and it is a bit challenging initially, but if you are persistent, you'll be richly rewarded.
  
  Have you read this book? What do you think about it?
• 
  Mary

  Very brief summary. Really too brief to be useful.
• 
  John

  The author was given an impossible task to summarize more than 2000 years of Chinese literature in about 150 pages. But I nevertheless learned a lot. I found the chapter on Chinese poetry, however, difficult to understand. That subject alone probably merited a separate book. As always, the books in this series have an excellent bibliography and suggestions for further reading.
  
  This is the third book I have read in the series. I would recommend this series to any serious student who wants to get "up to speed" in a subject matter the student is expected to understand as a prerequisite to further study.
• 
  Mihai

  Perfect if the reader tries to understand classical Chinese lit, as the main focus of the book is related to that. Very few books published after 1949 are presented there, which is somewhat understandable if we think in the longue durée of the Chinese history.
• 
  Scott

  This is a delightful summary of the entire history of Chinese Literature. It is a great place to start as it covers philosophy, poetry, drama, and modern fiction with sensitivity and intelligence.
• 
  Lisa

  My interest in Chinese literature is primarily contemporary fiction, but I still found this little book very interesting. As you can see from the table of contents, it traces the foundations of modern literature in an intriguing way:
  1.Foundations: ethics, parables and fish
  2.Poetry and poetics: landscapes, allusions and alcohol
  3.Classical narrative: history, jottings, and tales of the strange
  4.Vernacular drama and fiction: gardens, bandits and dreams
  5.Modern literature: trauma, movements and bus stops
  
  NB Throughout the text, the author uses Chinese characters (logograms) and Romanised Chinese as well as English. I can’t reproduce the logograms, but have included the Romanised Chinese in excerpts I have quoted.
  
  The fish in chapter one come from an ancient text in which the legendary sage Zhuangzi (369-286 BCE) has a conversation about the happiness of fish with the logician Huizi. But this is far from the oldest text still extant:
  
  

  The antiquity of early Chinese texts is astounding by Western standards. Although modern Chinese differs from early Chinese as much as English differs from Latin, experts today can still read the Chinese inscribed on tortoise shells and sheep scapulae dating from the Shang dynasty (1600-1046 BCE). Used for divination, these oracle bone inscriptions asked questions composed of individual characters (zi), the answers to which were divined by interpreting cracks when the bones were heated over fire.
  
  These characters became the foundation of Chinese culture. Although their forms and meanings evolved over time, modern Chinese still uses characters from ancient texts, and the continuity of the writing system has been crucial in helping China’s central traditions to cohere. (p.3)

  
  
  Knight says that China’s survival over three thousand years may owe more to its literary traditions than to its political history. Its unity derives, she says, from faith in the power of writing (wen) and writing played a crucial role in civil practice, nourishing cultural harmony.
  
  To read the rest of my review please visit
  https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/08/24/c...
  
• 
  Alexander

  The author has a wide-ranging knowledge of historical Chinese literature and explains trends, movements, and the intersection of history with literature so easily one isn’t aware of how difficult this task is. The final chapter is the lone exception. The author does not seem able to gain enough distance from the 20th century to describe it with a sufficiently cool eye, probably because the 20th century political categories overlap too much with our own. Yet the treatment of Chinese history and literature from ancient times through 1800 was so able I would recommend this without reservation for anyone looking for some sort of entry into reading Chinese poetry, fiction, or other literature.
• 
  Amy H. Sturgis

  Knight's book is very short (as the title suggests), and with a subject as vast as this one, that means a lot of important material doesn't get covered. For my specific purposes, however, I found this work to be very useful despite its brevity and broad strokes.
• 
  Ray Du

  The author does a good job of compressing three thousand years' Chinese literature into one little book, but the last chapter, which is about literature in modern China, seems to have been hastily composed, leaving out many notable authors like 贾平凹, 陈忠实，海子, etc.
• 
  Felix Ander Lee

  I have to admit that I learned more about Chinese Literature from this short book than from the education I received. I know, I’m a terrible student.
• 
  Linda

  This book is an absolute gem. Beautifully written, impeccably researched, brilliantly organised.
• 
  Brian Brogan

  Foundational, concise and clear, poetry, paintings and philosophy extracts and images, great choices with lucid and at times lyrical commentary. Succeeds admirably with its intentions.
  Recommended!
• 
  Aniela Smoczyńska

  The ‚very short’ in the title is misleading. Ale spoko poza tym. Ciekawy wybór tekstów. Jasny opis, chociaż nadal nie rozumiem o co chodzi z taoizmem.
• 
  Warren Tutwiler

  Good general overview up to the beginning of the 21st Century.
• 
  Ximing Dai

  Ranging from traditional literacy like Five Classics to modern literature, this short introduction covers numerous Chinese literature forms. I especially favor the way he interprets "Climbing Stock Tower" in the Preface and the examples he gives (Debating alongside the Hao River and Reed Bank and Fishing Boat) in the first two Chapters.
• 
  Sabina Knight

  This 2018 edition from Hong Kong restores many passages that were cut or heavily rewritten in the mainland Chinese version published in Nanjing in 2016. This translation in traditional Chinese characters is thus much better than that mangled version.
  
  That 2016 edition was bilingual, and it changed not only the (simplified) Chinese but also the (purportedly original) English. This 2018 translation in traditional Chinese characters from OUP Hong Kong includes those passages. The translator is the same. Clearly the book was subject to different degrees of verification and censorship. In neither case did the publishers consult me. Only upon seeing the published books did I learn of the translator or his work.
  
  The *extensive* censorship of the Nanjing edition likely occurred in the editorial process. It would be unfair to blame the individuals involved. Censorship is a much larger problem.
  
  In this 2018 edition, too, the translator misconstrues my points in a few passages. (I was given no chance to check either translation.) Still, I learned from reading his footnotes, even—or maybe especially–when we disagree.
  
  Link to the Oxford UP's Hong Kong listing of the book:
  
  https://shop.oupchina.com.hk/en/produ...
• 
  Peter

  Simplified characters would have been appreciated. In the eBook version, the characters are pictures and when expanded to try to view them, they are blurred beyond distinction.
  
  No poetry by Li Bai? The excerpts of two plays also seemed arbitrary and not illustrative. On the whole, a useful introduction for the interested and uninitiated.
• 
  Jackson Cyril

  Life is much too short and there are far too many good books. While this is a wonderful survey of Chinese literature from its beginnings to the present, I do lament that I will probably never get to read many of these beautiful works (heck I haven't read most of the great works of Tamil and English literature).
• 
  Rebecca

  Although appealing to a rather niche market, Knight manages to cover the thousands of years of Chinese literature at a rather impressive pace, from the early beginnings to the Confucian Analects to modern day post-socialist plays, without demanding any prior knowledge. Although much of this wasn't news to me, it was still rewarding to have everything recorded chronologically, and I've discovered some great contemporary works.