P: C362 or equivalent proficiency
Topic:  The Confucian Classics

Among the welter of ancient Chinese texts that are typically classed as
"Confucian," a small group constitutes the core of the canon which formed
the basis of orthodox education and thought for two thousand years: "The
Five Classics."  These five texts, the *Shijing*, *Shangshu*, *Liji*,
*Yijing*, and *Chunqiu*, constitute a very varied collection: they
represent five different literary genres, dating from widely different
eras, with very different historical and intellectual agendas. Each text
was understood through a unique hermeneutic technique, and together they
created a complex and supple template through which members of the
literate elite understood the world of ideas and experience.  Virtually all
significant texts of traditional China -- including those devoted to
rejecting Confucianism -- can be more deeply understood once they are read
in awareness of the content and interpretive traditions of the Five Classics.

This course will constitute a proseminar survey of the Five Classics,
exploring their content, form, origins, and traditional and contemporary
scholarship concerning them.  We will become familiar with each classic in
turn, exploring the particular difficulties of reading them and of
understanding the different levels of significance inherent in the text or
developed through tradition.  Other readings will include a limited amount
of traditional commentary, plus secondary scholarship in English, Chinese,
and (if appropriate) Japanese.  Individual students will choose a classic
to be the focus of a term research project.  The goal of the course is to
make sure students feel familiar with the contents of the texts, have built
basic reading skills to approach both texts and commentaries, have some
sense of the interpretive history behind the cultural use of these
texts, and have encountered, for at least one text, the rewards of
exploring its intellectual and literary texture.