Classics of Chinese Literature
Traditional Chinese literature gets examined across three genres: poetry, fiction, and drama, with emphasis on vernacular fiction. Students read translations of major masterworks and trace how the genres bleed into each other, how poetry surfaces inside narrative fiction, how fiction gets adapted into drama, and how drama in turn feeds back into fiction. The readings become a window onto traditional Chinese society: Confucian and Buddhist belief, the imperial bureaucracy and dynastic collapse, gender roles, class and ethnicity, family structure, and romance. No knowledge of Chinese is required since everything is read in English translation. This MIT OpenCourseWare offering includes the full syllabus, reading list, and assignments used in the original course, free to access, though it carries no certificate or instructor interaction.