Secondary scholarship report You may choose a piece from the list of selections: Lu, Xun; trans by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang, A brief history of Chinese fiction Beijing: Foreign Languages Press,...

• Secondary scholarship report

You may choose a piece from the list of selections:

Lu, Xun; trans by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang,
A brief history of Chinese fiction
Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1959

Gu, Ming Dong
Chinese theories of fiction: A non-Western narrative system
Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006

Shi ji

Durrant, Stephen W
The Cloudy Mirror: Tension and Conflict in the Writings of Sima Qian
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995

Hardy, Grant “Form and Narrative in Ssu-ma Ch’ien’s
Shih chi”
Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), 14 (1992): 1-23

Hardy, Grant
Worlds of bronze and bamboo: Sima Qian’s conquest history
New York: Columbia University Press, 1999

Han shu

Clark, Anthony E
Ban Gu’s history of early China
Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2008

Your report (2 pages) should:

1 Discuss the author’s overall approach Eg is it focused on: Providing a general overview of a topic? Offering a close reading and interpretation of one or more texts? Explaining particular terms or concepts necessary to understanding a text? Discussing historical or cultural contexts? Exploring or establishing a theoretical model? Comparing different texts or contexts?

2 Summarize the author’s main thesis (or argument), and the main ways in which s/he attempts to justify that thesis (this is not the same as summarizing everything discussed in the work)

3 Offer a critique of the author’s approach and argument What are its strengths and weaknesses? How effectively has the author established her or his thesis? To what extent has s/he accounted for the most important considerations?