From a political order to a knowledge structure: the influence of western library science on Chinese classical literary system

Abstract

The classical Chinese literary system owns no independent status because of its affiliation to catalogue books under the dual pressure from politics and Confucianism. Thus, political and ideological connotations come before the aesthetic value in its creation and interpretation. And Ji, one of the four categories in the Imperial Catalogue, had long been the synonym for classical literary system. Such situation remained stable until the importation of the cataloguing type in modern Western library science that changed the essence of the system into a knowledge structure from a political order. What’s more, it also helped to promote the specialization and discipline of literature, an essential link in the modernization of Chinese thinking and education. Despite the various advantages in this process, this paper argues that we should not neglect the more serious disadvantages in simplifying the essence of classical Chinese literary system into the plane aesthetic value, blind of its multi-dimensional functions indicated by the setting and ranking of categories and also the works’ location in cataloguing, both of which matter much more for the interpretation of classical Chinese literature.