The Columbia History of Chinese Literature.

• Author: Mather, Richard B.
• Position: Book Review

Edited by VICTOR H. MAIR. New York: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2002. Pp. xxiii + 1342. $65.

This is a monumental contribution to the field of Chinese literary studies. Aside from expected chapters on the development of prose and poetry, history, drama and fiction, with an analysis of distinctive genres within each of these categories, the book devotes considerable additional space to less expected subjects such as "Language and Script," "Myth," "The Supernatural," "Wit and Humor," the mutual relation between literature and art, classical exegesis, literary criticism, religious texts, regional and ethnic minority literatures, women's literature, even the reception of Chinese literature in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.

Since the book is primarily intended as a reference source, its 1,342 pages are not necessarily meant to be read consecutively cover to cover. The forty-five contributors, many of whom are already well known in their fields, have produced fifty-five chapters dealing with all the items listed above and more, from the first millennium B.C. to the present. Although no Chinese characters appear in the text proper, there are three separate glossaries, complete with characters, covering nearly eighty pages, dealing separately with technical terms, proper names, book-titles, sections thereof, and separate articles. The editor, Victor H. Mair, who has himself written extensively on China's contacts with the West during the medieval period, and who edited the earlier Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature in 1994, has made a conscious effort to transcend the time-honored groupings: "classics" (ching) in the early Chou, "philosophers" (tzu) during the Warring States, "rhapsodies" (fu in the Han, "lyric poetry" (shih) in the Six Dynasties and T'ang, "lyrics" (tz'u) in the Sung, operatic arias" (ch'u) in the Yuan, "venacular novels" (hsiao-shuo) in the Ming and Ch'ing, and the revolutionary "May Fourth Movement" (wu-ssu) after the foundation of the Republic. The result is both refreshing and insightful, even though very few readers, including this reviewer, may be able to summon the energy to read everything in the book with the close attention it deserves.

The editor makes it clear in the "Prolegomenon" that the aim of the book is "to weave together the latest findings of critical scholarship in a framework that is simultaneously chronological and topical." While duly acknowledging the existence of earlier attempts to record...