The 1980s, a decade which lingered between the aftermath of the Nativist Literature debate of 1977 and the lifting of martial law in 1987, saw the emergence of the ‘trilogy’ (daho xiaoshuo) in Taiwanese literature. Li Qiao’s Cold...

From earliest times, literature in China was considered to include philosophical and historical writing along with prose and poetry; literature was writing that met social needs or expressed one's deepest feelings, or both. Oral literary forms...

Chinese literature spans back thousands of years, from the earliest recorded dynastic court archives to the matured fictional novel arising in the medieval period to entertain the masses of literate Chinese. The introduction of widespread woodblock...

In this essay, Hegel focuses on the frequently appearing character of Ch'in Shu-pao, also known as Ch'in Ch'iung, a military hero of the seventh century. Hegel examines depictions of this historical figure in novels from both the Ming and Ch'ing eras to demonstrate key philosophical changes reflected in the development of the novel. Note that in the following essay, Chinese characters have been silently removed.

In this essay, Hegel examines the portrayal of individualism and self-indulgence in novels, including The Merry Adventures of Emperor Yang and Forgotten Tales of the Sui. Hegel finds that themes of fatalism and responsibility to the larger community counter individual expression for seventeenth-century Chinese authors.

In this excerpt, Hsia attempts to define the genre of the military romance, distinguishing such novels from historical novels that focus on a popularized retelling of events. Hsia bases his arguments on novels from the Ming and Ching dynasties that detail, with some embellishment, the battles of the T'ang and Sung eras. Note that Chinese characters in the following essay have been silently removed.