On the Narration of the Past in China: An Outline

Abstract

The differing social roles of historians in ancient Greece and in ancient China provide the starting point for this investigation of the specific features of Chinese historiography. The writing and reading of history in China was far from a specialized pursuit: it formed one of the core domains of a generalist practice of scholarship with which not only scholars and writers, but all aspirants to public office, had to be familiar. The twentieth-century reorganization of academic disciplines has partially but not totally obscured the earlier function of historians as advisors and critics of the powerful. Speaking from the vantage point of guoxue, the traditional Chinese interdisciplinary field of literature plus history and philosophy, Liu Dong here advocates a revival of Chinese modes of recording and reliving the past.