“Refreshing . . . exciting.” —China Review International (10:1, spring 2003)

“The ten essays collected here constitute a penetrating and nuanced account of the crucial aspects of aesthetic thought in the Six Dynasties period—a time rich in aesthetic reflection. One strikingly original aspect of the book is its attention not only to aesthetic thinking but also to specific practices informed by such thinking. Chinese Aesthetics will easily become the standard work of reference on this subject and period.” —Robert Ford Campany, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana University

“The ten contributors to this volume are either leading figures in Six Dynasties studies or young scholars with recognized publications on the period. This is an academic dream team, one might say, and the result is most impressive. It is a volume of rare consequence, skillfully opening up for the first time to the English-speaking world a vast terrain of premodern literary and aesthetic activity that is of signal importance.” —David D. W. Wang, Dean Lung Professor of Chinese Studies, Columbia University

This singular work presents the most comprehensive and nuanced studies available in any Western language of Chinese aesthetic thought and practice during the Six Dynasties (A.D. 220–589). Despite a succession of dynastic and social upheavals, the literati preoccupied themselves with both the sensuous and the transcendent and strove for cultural dominance. By the end of the sixth century, their reflections would evolve into a sophisticated system of aesthetic discourse characterized by its own rhetoric and concepts.

A prologue details the historical context in which Six Dynasties aesthetics arose and sketches out its major stages of development. The ten essays that follow bring fresh perspectives to bear on important writings on literature, music, painting, calligraphy, and gardening. Grounded in close readings of primary texts, they reveal the complex, dynamic interplay between life and art, the sensuous and the metaphysical, and the artistic and the philosophicaleligious that lies at the heart of the aesthetic thought and practice of the time. As a whole, the collection demonstrates that Six Dynasties achieved a sophistication in aesthetic thought comparable in many ways to that of the West: The discussion of disinterestedness in art, aesthetic judgment, and how mental images mediate between the supersensible and the sensible are reminiscent of Kant. The findings of various Chinese critics provide much food for thought in the broad fields of comparative literature and aesthetics.

Chinese Aesthetics will fill a gap in Western sinological studies of the period. It will appeal to scholars and students in premodern Chinese literary studies, comparative aesthetics, and cultural studies and be a welcome reference to anyone interested in ancient Chinese culture.

illus.

Contributors: Susan Bush; Zong-qi Cai; Kang-i Sun Chang; Ronald Egan; Robert E. Harrist, Jr.; Rania Huntington; Wai-yee Li; Shuen-fu Lin; Victor Mair; François Martin.

Zong-qi Cai is professor of Chinese and comparative literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Read the table of contents and/or the prologue (PDF).