Organizing Literary Information in Tang China

The Institute of East Asian Studies at UC Berkeley presents a talk with Christopher Nugent to examine leishu 類書 (“categorically arranged writings”) as one way of managing literary information in the Tang period.

Speaker: Christopher Nugent, Asian Studies, Williams College

The social elite in Tang China were expected to display familiarity with a substantial body of past literary works in contexts as varied as social poetry composition and the civil service exam. While simple memorization was one strategy, there was a recognized need for more systematic ways of organizing literary information so that it could be mastered and utilized efficiently. My talk examines leishu 類書 (“categorically arranged writings”) as one way of managing literary information in this period. I will discuss what the arrangement, sources, and content of such leishu as the Chuxue ji 初學記 can tell us about different ways writers and thinkers in the Tang understood and made use of their literary inheritance.