New publication: Introduction to Classical Chinese by Kai Vogelsang

2. September 2021, von AAI Webmaster

Foto: Oxford University Press

We are delighted to announce a publication that has been long in the making: Kai Vogelsang's Introduction to Classical Chinese. 

This textbook provides a comprehensive scholarly introduction to Classical Chinese and its texts. Classical Chinese is the language of Confucius and Mencius and their contemporaries, who wrote the seminal texts of Chinese philosophy more than 2,000 years ago. Although it was used as a living language for only a relatively short time, it was the foundation of Chinese education throughout the Imperial age, and formed the basis of a literary tradition that continues to the present day.

It is the first textbook of Classical Chinese to combine grammatical description, in-depth textual analyses, philological methods, and the fundamentals of Chinese history. It presents Classical Chinese texts as they appear in their original editions, with detailed explanations and includes an extensive glossary with phonological reconstructions, word classes, English translations, and citations to illustrate usage. Thus it offers students all the necessary tools to read, understand, and analyse Classical Chinese texts, including descriptions of syntactic features, introductions to historical and cultural topics, and selected readings from classical literature with original commentaries.