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This book offers students all the necessary tools to read, understand, and analyse Classical Chinese texts, including descriptions of syntactic features, introductions to historical and cultural topics, and selected readings from classical literature with original commentaries. It also provides an extensive glossary and up-to-date bibliography.
List of contents
- Preface
- List of figures
- List of abbreviations
- Abbreviated book titles
- Introduction
- Part I
- 1: Word Classes and Constituents
- 2: Noun Phrases 1
- 3: Nominal Clauses
- 4: Verbal Clauses
- 5: Objects and Questions
- 6: Noun Phrases 2
- 7: Adverbial Modification
- 8: Prepositional Phrases I
- 9: Prepositional Phrases II
- 10: Reference to Time
- 11: Complements
- 12: Nominalization
- 13: Themes
- 14: Anteposition and Inversion
- 15: Complex Sentences 1
- 16: Complex Sentences 2
- Part II
- 17: Lunyu
- 18: Mengzi
- 19: Xunzi
- 20: Zuozhuan
- 21: Guoyu
- 22: Laozi
- 23: Zhuangzi
- 24: Mozi
- 25: Guanzi
- 26: Military Texts
- 27: Shangjun shu
- 28: Han Feizi
- 29: Lüshi chunqiu
- 30: Zhanguo ce
- 31: Shiji
- 32: Yijing
- 33: Ritual Texts
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Kai Vogelsang is Professor of Sinology at the Asien-Afrika-Institut, University of Hamburg. He has published widely on Chinese language, culture, and history. His most recent works include Geschichte Chinas [History of China] (5th edition; Reclam, 2018) and Shangjun shu: Schriften des Fürsten von Shang (Kröner Verlag, 2017).
Summary
This textbook provides a comprehensive scholarly introduction to Classical Chinese and its texts. Classical Chinese is the language of Confucius and Mencius and their contemporaries, who wrote the seminal texts of Chinese philosophy more than 2,000 years ago. Although it was used as a living language for only a relatively short time, it was the foundation of Chinese education throughout the Imperial age, and formed the basis of a literary tradition that continues to the present day.
This book offers students all the necessary tools to read, understand, and analyse Classical Chinese texts, including: step-by-step clearly illustrated descriptions of syntactic features; core vocabulary lists; introductions to relevant historical and cultural topics; selected readings from classical literature with original commentaries and in-depth explanations; introductions to dictionaries and other reference works on the study of ancient China; and a guide to philological methods used in the critical analysis of Classical Chinese texts. The extensive glossary provides phonological reconstructions, word classes, English translations, and citations to illustrate usage, while the up-to-date bibliography serves as a valuable starting point for further research.
