Wen, Literature, and Belles Lettres: Reconfiguring Chinese Literature in Nineteenth-Century English Sinology

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the fluid nature of literature as exemplified both semantically and conceptually in the English-language studies of Chinese literature conducted by Western Sinologists in the nineteenth century. If Chinese literary modernization of the early twentieth century is seen as shaped by the contact with foreign literary theories, Sinologists in the nineteenth century had already engaged actively with English literary concepts to reconfigure Chinese literature in their English-language writings. This article contends that, regardless of their impact on Chinese literary modernity, the Sinologists’ conceptions underlined the aesthetic and generic concerns that are fundamental to the modern understanding of literature and thereby fostered a renewed imagination of Chinese literature in the English-speaking world. Examining a wide range of primary materials, including dictionaries and Sinological writings, this article aims to unfold their transcultural naming and legitimizing process that gave rise to the knowledge category of Chinese literature through contingent English and Chinese literary terminology, narrative frameworks, and categorization schemes. This article traces the unnoticed history in comparative literary history to offer a genealogical understanding of the Western conception of Chinese literature. It also provides a new dimension for reviewing and analyzing the dialogue and interplay between Western and Chinese literary ideas within the Sinologists’ writings prior to the overwhelming influence of Western literary ideas during the period of Chinese literary modernity.