Classical Chinese

Course Overview

This year-long elective course introduces the essentials of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax of Classical Chinese through close readings of authentic ancient texts, and aims to develop the students’ reading comprehension skills, translation techniques, cultural interpretation abilities, and rhetorical strategies for interpersonal and presentational communications. Texts are selected from historically significant canons and are from a wide variety of genres. Even though the texts are thousands of years old, they are not “dead.” Unlike Medieval English, which is not used in daily life today, many words, set phrases, idioms, expressions, and grammar structures from Classical Chinese texts are still extensively used in Modern Mandarin Chinese. Knowledge of Classical Chinese is therefore a valuable tool for learning Modern Chinese, understanding the roots of Chinese cultural heritage, and efficiently communicating with native speakers of Chinese. Through the practice of reading the highly stylized form of literary language and translating it into modern Mandarin in both oral and written forms, the course acquaints students not only with classical Chinese cultural heritage, but also the underlying working mechanism that is in many ways still largely relevant to the form and usage of Mandarin Chinese today.