Canonization of Chinese Literature in the East and West

The evolution of chinia's litterary has had many didfrent factors leading up to it's formation. Theses include Politics and Ideology. China's literary canon has been relatively fixed when comapred to the canon's of ancient greece, egypt or modern literary canons, though more flexible that the literary canon of dark age catholic europe, and the islamic middle east. this derives from the fact that while we find mainly works of confucius and his follwer at the center of the chinese canon he did not hold the same religiosity of the works of mohammed or of jesus, in the qurran and bible respectively.

Literary Canon

A literary canon denotes a canon of books and other forms of literature that are influential in shaping it’s target culture. In the final analysis, literary canons are closely related to the aesthetic value which is supposed to pass the test of time. In such studies the concept ‘canon’ denotes any corpus that is recognized by any given community as authoritative or superb. That corpus could be a collection of texts, of authors, artefacts (for instance images), rules (say, for producing artwork), curriculum contents, action (often ritual), or dogma

Note to reader: Becuase of the many reasons for canonization this paper will be divided into to processes of canonazation then chrologically rather than primarily chronoloically to better see the modes of canonization.

Kendall Folkert made a distinction between ‘vectorizing’ and ‘vectorized’ canons.9 The first are canonical because of their ability to form people’s view of life and society. The latter are canonical because they conform to views of life and society that are already established before and outside of the canon

Factors for cannaozation of Chinese Literature

Faction and groups choseing

Many lierary canon from all over the world have been effected by this equalizer of groups or leaders dennoting a work or collection of works to be canonical. early examples included the works of cunfucus, though attributed to be written by him were more likely a construct of scholar gropus who edited and compiled his teachings. Because of this the cunfucian canon is see more as a traditinal constuct rather than the wroks of one man. This "Scribal Class" ofgen tried tto legitimize thier works. In modern time the literary canon of china (and globally for that matter)is decided on by Professors

Politics and Ideology

Since the beginning of written chinese literature the currrernt politics, history and ideologies of either the people of rulers mandadted the currrent literary canon. In early chinese history a prime exapmle is that of Qin Shi HuangDi who used the legal school to ligitimize his rule. We see this trend of new dynasties usingg literarute to ligitimize there stanidngg and create litterary canons. the han Dynasty followin the Qin dynasty used confucian works to ligitimize their rule and the 4 bbooks and 5 classics instatnly were canon. Another political drive for the cannaization of literary works especially confuscious in early chinese history was that is promoted and honor the exstitance of an emporoer or ruling body, which the governments could use to ligitimise themselves. In modern chinese history we see major examples of vecotorized canonization where communist writingg from russia when translated were very quickly canoninized reguardless of any asthetic value. if a canonized work help certian ideologies that were favored by the rruleingg party of china that came from Russia it was immediately claimed by the oligarchy to be canon.

In religiosity we see similar places where the works of cunfusism were redeily accepted by the West becuase of it's similarity to tthiere judial-christain views. ironically both the works of cunfusius and the bilical text had a very simialr juorney in thier canonization where the orrginal speak did litle to none of the writingg and where a scribal class later recoreded thier teaching. though the works of the western biblical canon have a more rigid religgiosity, the works of confusisct were still reguarded with some sense of sacredness.

"The scribal class was influential in a more subtle way. As teachers and (local) interpreters of the canon, they were responsible for maintaining social power related to the use of the canon. The scribes would have been responsible for the legitimacy perceived in the canon, its truth and value. This equilibrium between rulers and scribes was historically rooted in the fact that the material that became the Five Classics was derived from traditional material in pre-Han private and state schooling.A prime reason that Han emperors chose to canonize this tradition in the first place would have been its ability to prove itself as trustworthy for new generations of would-be officials. The canon worked, as every canon must do. For this reason, while authorization of the Confucian canon was an imperial matter, the legitimacy of the canon was secured through scribal activity."

Translations

in respect to modern chinese literary history beinging from the late qing to now the most imporant force of canonazation would be translations of chinese texts into western languagges and western iterature into chinese. The

Re-readability Trevor Ross “A work that endures… offers qualities of insight, expression, or beauty that demand repeated readings while resisting complete encapsulation” Credibility

References

1. Terje Stordalen, The Canonization of Ancient Hebrew and Confucian Literature. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 32.1 (2007)

2. Sun Yifeng, Opening the Cultural Mind: Translation and the Modern Chinese Literary Canon. MLQ March 2008