Topic: The Analects and Text Analysis
The principal goal of this class will be to use a close philological
exploration of the Confucian Analects as a vehicle to better train students
(and the instructor) in the methodologies of text analysis.  We will employ
four types of material, apart from reading very closely in the Analects
itself: (1) ancillary texts, such as Sima Qian's accounts of Confucius and
his group in the Shi-Ji; (2) texts from the commentarial tradition,
especially the earliest commentaries, collected in He Yen's 3rd century
A.d. Lun-yu ji-jie; (3) philological studies of the Analects, such as those
by the Japanese scholars Takeuchi Yoshio (Rongo no kenkyu) and Kimura
Eiichi (Koshi to Rongo–the degree to which we explore these works will
depend on the number of Japanese readers in the course), and the recently
published study by Bruce and Taeko Brooks, The Original Analects; (4)
analyses of hermeneutic (text-interpretive) techniques, both theoretical
studies, such as Richard Palmer's Hermeneutics, and examples of the very
developed tradition of synoptic gospel philology, such as Rudolf Bultmann's
The History of the Synoptic Tradition.

The focus of the course will be on method–our interest will be in using the
Analects to better learn how to address issues of text creation in terms of
historical and cultural contexts and explore the etymologies and functional
force of words in terms of textual contexts.  The design of the course
should make it useful for student of any genre of Chinese text.  Although
the world of the Analects will be important to us, the topic of the course
is neither Confucianism nor early Chinese philosophy.  Our principal
interest will be in the arts of textual analysis.

Students must possess a basic knowledge of Classical Chinese, and practical
competence in reading secondary scholarship in either modern Chinese or
Japanese.