Writing Early China

Edward L. Shaughnessy

Nov. 2023 · State University of New York Press

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Archaeological discoveries over the past one hundred years have resulted in repeated calls to "rewrite ancient Chinese history." This is especially true of documents written on oracle bones, bronze vessels, and bamboo strips. In Writing Early China, Edward L. Shaughnessy surveys all of these types of documents and considers what they reveal about the creation and transmission of knowledge in ancient China. Opposed to the common view that most knowledge was transmitted orally in ancient China, Shaughnessy demonstrates that by no later than the tenth century BCE scribes were writing lengthy texts like portions of the Chinese classics, and that by the fourth century BCE the primary mode of textual transmission was by way of visual copying from one manuscript to another.

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Edward L. Shaughnessy is Creel Distinguished Service Professor of Early China in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Rewriting Early Chinese Texts, also published by SUNY Press.