Thursday, October 27 06:30pm to 08:30pm
China Institute
40 Rector Street, (2nd Floor), New York, NY 10006

In conjunction with Art in a Time of Chaos, the grand exhibition of cultural relics from the Six Dynasties Period at China Institute, Ben Wang, Senior Lecturer of Language and Humanity of the Institute, offers a special course on literature of the Six Dynasties Period. Lives and works by representative poets of the period as well as the quintessential spirit of famed texts A New Account of Tales of the World and Zhaoming’s Collection of Literary Works will be discussed in this three-session series.

The Six Dynasties Period (220-589) marks as one of the most significant and influential periods in the history of Chinese literature, namely poetry, in that pentasyllabic and heptasyllabic quatrains emerged. These new poetic styles would flourish and dominate the poetic scene in the later Tang Dynasty (618-907). Another unique linguistic happening of this period was the start of the formal tonal system (the four tones) of the Chinese language, which led to an ideal musicality in poetry.

One of the two most important collections of literature from the period is Zhaoming’s Collection of Literary Works by Crown Prince Zhaoming (501-531) of the Liang Dynasty (502-557), the first and a stupendous collection of literary and poetic works published before the untimely death of the young prince. The other is A New Account of Tales of the World, an amusing book, the first of its kind, on the romantic anecdotes and sayings of the witty men of letters of the time, which was compiled and edited by Liu Yiqing (403-444) of the Song Dynasty (420-581) of the Six Dynasties.

Join us as Ben Wang delves into these fascinating literary works for the first time at China Institute.

This lecture will be conducted in English. No previous knowledge of the Chinese language is required.

To register visit: http://www.chinainstitute.org