Literary Chinese is a written language that matured long before the Qin dynasty (221-206 B.C.), when China first became an empire. It continued to be used by China's governing and elite cultures for nearly three millennia. A good command of Literary Chinese is therefore indispensable for the study of pre-modern Chinese literature, thought, history, politics and society.

The idioms, allusions, syntax, and style of Literary Chinese continue to pervade the modern language. Its enduring influence results from the fact that the great legacies of Chinese culture, right down to the present day, have been largely preserved in this medium. Without a grounding in Literary Chinese, it is therefore impossible to gain a full understanding of newspaper articles, literary works, and scholarly prose written in contemporary Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the People's Republic of China. It has also shaped the linguistic and cultural traditions of Korea, Japan and Vietnam.

This course will cover a selection of advanced readings in Literary Chinese. Each semester, a different type of Literary Chinese text will be studied: historiography; excavated texts; anecdotal literature; legal documents;poetry; Buddhist Chinese. Students will read prescribed texts in class. There will be tuition in the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax specific to each type of text and register of Literary Chinese. There will also be an introduction to the contextual information necessary to appreciate the different types of text under study.