Abstract：Following Liu Xie’s train of thought in his The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons, this article constructs a broad patterning-based scheme for codifyinga system of ancient Chinese prose forms. This scheme is composed of two basic modes of patterning, that is, textual patterning and extratextual patterning at the first level, and four categories of textual patterning, that is, textual patterning with repetitive words, textual patterning with aggregation of disyllabic words, textual patterning in the parallel style, and textual patterning in the repetitive-parallel style at the second level. An in-depth analysis of eight famous texts, drawn from antiquity to the Qing Dynasty, reveals how continual innovations in textual patterning and extra-textual patterning gave rise to manifold and inherently-related prose forms over the millennia. The close reading also sheds light on the distinctive artistic features of these prose forms, as well as their symbiotic relationships with the three types of genres (narrative, descriptive, and expository) and with broad sociopolitical and cultural developments.
Cai Zongqi. Constructing a Taxonomy of Ancient Chinese Prose Forms:Four Basic Types of Prose Patterning[J]. Journal of Peking University(Philosophy and Social Sciences), 2021, 58(6): 98-109.
