''A History of Chinese Literature'' is a history of

Chinese literature The history of Chinese literature extends thousands of years, and begins with the earliest recorded inscriptions, court archives, building to the major works of philosophy and history written during the Axial Age. The Han dynasty, Han (202 ...

written by

Herbert Giles Herbert Allen Giles (; 8 December 184513 February 1935) was a British diplomat and sinologist who was the professor of Chinese at the University of Cambridge for 35 years. Giles was educated at Charterhouse School before becoming a British dip ...

and published in 1901. Although there had been surveys of Chinese literature in Japanese, it was the first such survey to appear in English. In his preface, Giles claims that such a work of history was not already available, even in Chinese, since Chinese scholars realized the "utter hopelessness" of "achieving even comparative success in a general historical survey of the subject". But he adds that "It may be said without offence that a work which would be inadequate to the requirements of a native public, may properly be submitted to English readers as an introduction into the great field which lies beyond". A large part of the book is devoted to translations, "enabling the Chinese author, so far as is possible, to speak for himself".

Reception and influence

The scholar and writer

Lin Yutang Lin Yutang (10 October 1895 – 26 March 1976) was a Chinese inventor, linguist, novelist, philosopher, and translator. One scholar commented that Lin's "particular blend of sophistication and casualness found a wide audience, and he became a ma ...

commented that "'History of Chinese Literature' was a misnomer; it was a series of attempted essays on certain Chinese works, and was not even an outline covering the successive periods.” Qian Zhongshu noted what he called an "amusing mistake" in Giles' "very readable book." Giles: ::Giles gives a complete version of Ssu-k'ung Tu's 'philosophical poem, consisting of twenty-four apparently unconnected stanzas'. This poem, according to Professor Giles, 'is admirably adapted to exhibit the forms under which pure Taoism commends itself to the mind of a cultivated scholar.' This is what Professor Giles thinks Ssu-K'ung Tu to have done, but what Ssu-K'ung Tu really does is to convey in imageries of surpassing beauty the impressions made upon a sensitive mind by twenty-four different kinds of poetry—'pure, ornate, grotesque', etc. On 'Old Chinese Poetry
" The China Critic, VI:50 (14 December 1933): 1206-1208., reprinted at The China Heritage Quarterly 39.31 June September 2012

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...

used Giles' translations as the basis for what have been called his English "translations of translations".

Editions

* Available online at
Google BooksA History of Chinese Literature

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

A History of Chinese Literature

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital li ...

References

References and further reading

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Reviews

* Candlin, George T.
A HISTORY OF CHINESE LITERATURE (Review)
''The Monist'' 11, no. 4 (1901): 616–27. *Suzuki, Teitaro.
PROFESSOR GILES'S HISTORY OF CHINESE LITERATURE (Review)
" The Monist 12, no. 1 (1901): 116–22. 1901 non-fiction books Chinese-language books {{china-lit-stub