EALC8625 - Chinese Palaeography

The goal of this class is to learn to read excavated texts from Early China in difficult early orthographies. As well as reading the texts in the usual way for their intellectual, literary or historical content, we will focus on the script in which they are written, and examine critically some of the philological methods that are used to turn an excavated manuscript into a readable "edition". We will also consider how excavated texts relate to each other and to received texts, and how they might have been produced, circulated and consumed. The exact choice of texts for this course has varied each time, and may be modified to suit the interests and prior preparation of students. Typically we will be concentrating on ca. 300 BCE literary and philosophical texts. These present richer and more instructive philological challenges than later Han-period manuscripts, while not being as obscurely difficult as the inscriptions from the Western Zhou and Shang periods. They also present substantial challenges to traditional views of Early China and its literature and thought.