ABSTRACT
Any understanding of the fundamental principles and assumptions underlying the writing and reading of Chinese literature should begin with a consideration of the larger cultural context in which those conceptions were embedded and which they to a large extent articulate. Indeed, it is no mere coincidence that the very word for writing in classical Chinese, wen, embraces a multitude of meanings beyond that of literature alone—among them culture, civilization, learning, pattern, refinement, and embellishment. The notion of literature as the primarily aesthetic phenomenon of belles lettres arose only very late in China—as indeed was the case in the West as well—and never took deep or exclusive root in the tradition. Much more compelling were the presumptions that literature was an integral element of the cosmos and of the sociopolitical world, and that in writing of the self one spoke ineluctably to and of society as well: the forms and patterns of one’s writing corresponded naturally with those of the universe itself.
