Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 11, 2022

A History of Chinese Prosodic Literature：Theoretical Construction and a Research Framework

(Abstract)

Feng Shengli

In the study of literary history, inquiry into the artistic forms is an area yet to be further explored through the new lens of cutting-edge theories of contemporary linguistics. Since prosody is a foundation stone of Chinese (Hanyu) literary art, a framework of history of Chinese prosodic literature can thus be established. Such a history takes the principle of the synchronous development of language and literature as its basis, with a theoretical structure consisting of five subsystems, i.e., the chronological history of Chinese prosodic literature, the art history of Chinese prosodic literature, the genre history of Chinese prosodic literature, the history of writers in Chinese prosodic literature, and the history of theories of Chinese prosodic literature. The former three are of principal and comprehensive significance to the fourth one that in return is of material and case-study significance to the former three, while the theoretical history provides an abstract integration and guidance for the first four. The five subsystems are both interrelated and independent. This proposition is aimed at providing a distinctively new aesthetic approach to the appreciation and study of language-based beauty of literature in the construction of theoretical history of Chinese literature.