The time from the mid-late Eastern Han Dynasty to the early period of the Three Kingdoms witnessed the simultaneous use of both bamboo and paper and the transition from the former to the latter as the preferred medium for literature. Paper, as a newly developed medium, was an informal text vehicle at first and had a closer connection with popular and recreational texts. The breakdown of the Eastern Han Dynasty accelerated the process of the replacement of bamboo by paper. Broad room for writing and cheap cost for production by paper changed writing conventions, shortened the composing process, and enlarged the volume of texts; all these made for a freer and more direct expression of feelings and meanings. The innovation in text carrier directly broadened the influence of literature, raised its value, promoted letter correspondence  as a literary genre and enhanced the quality of literature as a way of expressing one s emotions. The change of text carrier led to the change in literary style, which gave rise to a more detailed study of literary genres. The enlargement of knowledge among intellectuals brought about the fashion of using dian Qx (words that have a historical context). With the rising status of paper, the status of recreational works also rose. Meanwhile, the transition between these two mediums disrupted the propagation of traditional works.

This essay discusses the ancient Chinese literary classics by borrowing the prospective of canon  from the studies of Western literature. Studying the central issues of establishment, quality, type, and influence of ancient classics, the authors attempt to present their ancient history, decadent practices, and their central position in ancient literature and literary criticism. Moreover, from a broader perspective of modern theory, this essay argues that ancient classics are part of the important resources to release the tension between the traditional and the modern world.

The term kepan y裄$ means to divide a text into chapters and paragraphs. By explicating the context of Buddhist kepan and its influence on the explanation of Confucian classics, this paper tries to demonstrate how wide and profound this influence was on literary criticism in three aspects: literary criticism, fluency and coherence of writing, and relationships between the authors of literary theories and Buddhism in the early Tang Dynasty.

During the reigns of Longqing 枂^? and Wanli NS? of the Ming Dynasty, there were four celebrated premiers (Shoufu 櫀弲), who took literary works to mind for the benefit of their bureaucratic rule (Lizhi Tl?) and wanted to make literature serve politics. Among them, Xu Jie _悥6 claimed that morality comes first and literature second on the basis of the Six Classics and various other schools of thought. Gao Gong 氊b? seriously forbade profuse rhetoric and punished those who played with it. Zhang Juzheng _ \Ekc often oriented his poetics to politics and polity. And Shen Shixing u3e鰣L also placed politics before poetry, and practicality before artistry. They were, however, quite different in their personal lives when they dealt with literature, and some were capable of beautiful writing with no moral preaching at all. Moreover, they were tolerant of popular literary style when it did not affect their political activities.

The introduction of advanced printing technology from the West and the fiction revolution  accelerated fiction writing and printing into the modern mode. The book markets quickly expanded and the proportion of fiction publications solidly grew, which all led to a fiercer competition for the reading market. During this transition, the price of fictional literature fluctuated and was stabilized only through the fierce competition as well as the supervision from the mass media.

The ideological trend of counter-West centralism  is becoming more and more obvious in the academic circle of Chinese literary theory from the 1980s to the beginning of this century. This article regards a certain number of phenomena as surveying targets, and analyzes that this ideological trend is embodied not only in evident purposes, slogans and views, but also in the re-thinking of education history and in the work of literary material and the reestablishing of criticism history. This article holds that the combination of two kinds of opposed learning trends for study and application respectively would be helpful in breaking through the barriers of single-sided logic, emphasizing native literary tradition, participating in contemporary literature practice and defining Chinese literary theory in the 21st century.