Rethinking the Sinosphere

Book excerpt: "For hundreds of years, into the twentieth century, the culture groups in the areas we now know as China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam shared a great many political and social values, religious beliefs, and artistic and literary traditions. These common cultural features were recorded and transmitted in the same basic written language-classical or literary Chinese (known as guwen/wenyan in China, Kanbun in Japan, Hanmun in Korea, and Hánvan in Vietnam). The umbrella term for this shared language is 'literary Sinitic'-a term designed to recognize the fact that although guwen/wenyan originally developed in China, it had a vibrant life of its own in other areas of East Asia (i.e., what this study terms the Sinosphere). Rethinking the Sinosphere: Poetics, Aesthetics, and Identity Formation will appeal not only to academic specialists in the histories, philosophies, literary and artistic traditions of East Asia, but also to instructors of college-level courses in East Asian history and culture"--