Classical Chinese Texts
Text TypologyOur investigations suggest that many classical texts are not the sort of authorial, single-impulse productions with which modern readers are familiar. Nor were they written for a general literate public and preserved in an independent literary milieu; a literary culture of that type seems to have come into existence only in Han. Most classical texts arose from different causes, and survived by other means.
We here outline the principal types of text which we have so far found in the Warring States corpus. Our criterion for these distinctions is the process by which the texts came into being. There are two basic types: static texts and growth texts. How far one goes in distinguishing subtypes is partly a matter of taste and convenience; ultimately each text has unique features. A few possible subdivisions are suggested in the notes on specific texts.
OutlineStatic Texts
Single Composition or Combination
Integral
Growth Texts
Continuous or Intermittent Addition
Complications
Note that "forged" is not a text type (it is an authorial detail). Neither is "interpolated" (it is a textual vicissitude rather than a textual process), although self-interpolation is one of the possible modes of text growth. So also with repertoires and canons, which are not growth types strictly speaking, but rather texts or collections which are held in particular cultural respect, or performed in a certain way. Whether a given canon or repertoire grows or not is a separate question, and a given text will be categorized according to the answer to that question.
For a version of of the Text Typology pages which recognizes some subdivisions not separated here, and which includes examples from Greek and Roman antiquity as well as from modern times, see the Typology portion of our Philology section. We actually recommend this version over the present one, since it brings the matter of text types within the range of modern Western readers' own experience, and thus shows that it is not some alien consideration, but something we ourselves are already familiar with.
Classical Chinese Texts is Copyright © 1993- by E Bruce and A Taeko Brooks
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