Concepts of Authorship

Abstract

What are the words and phrases used to designate authorship in classical Chinese literature? What are the anecdotes and stories told to emblematize or dramatize the contexts and meanings of authorship? How does the attribution to or the invention of an author define or control the meanings of a text? How do markers of authorial presence function in a text? How does genre shape authorial voice? How do anonymous texts generate authors? How do images of authors (as distinct from historical actors) produce texts? Many scholars believe that authorship becomes increasingly individualistic and self-conscious for the period covered by this volume. How valid is this historical trajectory? In exploring these questions, this chapter examines notions of orality, textual authority, textual transmission, patronage, commentary, editorial labor, forgery, anonymity, originality, imitation, and collective authorship.