{"id":8591,"date":"2019-10-31T18:29:52","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T18:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/chinese-reading\/chinese-literature-knowledge\/"},"modified":"2019-10-31T18:29:52","modified_gmt":"2019-10-31T18:29:52","slug":"chinese-literature-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinesemoment.com\/fr\/chinese-literature-knowledge\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Literature Knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"
In this definition it follows the traditio<\/em>nal Chinese classification, the four categories. This traditio<\/em>nal system is not able to include all kinds of writings.<\/p>\n

The word "literature" has two meanings. In a narrower sense it means belles-lettres, writings done with a purpose of entermainment, leisure, self-ex<\/em>pression, and so on, like poems, novels, letters, or diaries. In a broader sense, like it is treated here, "literature" means everything that has been written, including philosophical writings, scientific treatises, political writings, geography, ins<\/em>criptions on tomb stones, or docu<\/em>ments of court politics.<\/p>\n

Newspapers and journals, for example, find no place in it, because they were totally unknown in traditio<\/em>nal China. Novels and romances are also dealt negligently with, as being an inferior stlye of writing. It is therefore necessary to provide several different "search tools" for my readers:<\/p>\n

As far as possible I have tried to translate all the titles referred to in this encyclopedia. Some of these translations might be not accurate because one would first have to read the whole book before understanding what the title exactly means. I apologize for this imperfectness.<\/p>\n

There is a not very small problem with the aggregation of syllables in the trans<\/em>cription of the book titles in the Pinyin trans<\/em>cription. For myself I have developed the following rules although in some points they are not very satisfactorily.<\/p>\n

Some rules for the aggregation of syllables in book titles:<\/p>\n

o<\/em>nly the first letter is written in capital style (Sanguo yanyi \u4e09\u56fd\u6f14\u4e49)
Two-syllable titles are written in one wor(So<\/em>ngshi \u5b8b\u53f2)
Three-syllable titles are written in one wor(Shuihuzhuan \u6c34\u6d52\u4f20)
Four-syllable titles are written in two words (Sanguo yanyi \u4e09\u570b\u6f14\u7fa9)
Five-syllable titles are arranged in the mode 2-2-1 (Da-Tang xiyou ji \u5927\u5510\u897f\u6e38\u8bb0)
Names of studios are written in one wor(Yueweicaotang biji \u9605\u5fae\u8349\u5802\u7b14\u8bb0)
All these rules are also applied to titles that can be grammatically analysed as phrases (Zibuyu \u5b50\u4e0d\u8bed "[What] the Master did not say")
All these rules are also applied to titles that co<\/em>ntain proper names which otherwise would be written in capital letters (like the "Han" in Houhanshu \u540e\u6c49\u4e66)
Exceptions:<\/p>\n

Letters can be capitals when the first part of a title can be seen as a prefix (Yangzi Fayan \u626c\u5b50\u6cd5\u8a00 "The book Fayan by Master Yang")
Letters can be capitals if part of a proper name (Huangshi Gong sanlüe \u9ec3\u77f3\u516c\u4e09\u7565 "The three strategies of Master Yellow Stone", Pingding Junggar fanglüe \u5e73\u5b9a\u51c6\u683c\u5c14\u65b9\u7565 "The military annals of the co<\/em>nquest of Dzungaria")
Letters can be capitals if two proper names are combined or a dynasty is given an epithet; in these cases a hyphen is used (Wu-Yue chunqiu \u5434\u8d8a\u6625\u79cb "Spring and Autumn of Wu and Yue"\uff0c Da-Qing huidian \u5927\u6e05\u4f1a\u5178 "The statutes of the Great Qing")
In local gazetteers the name of the place is separated from the term "records of…" (Wujun zhi \u5434\u90e1\u5fd7)
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