/lit/ - Literature

>>21906294
Reading list for the true scholar.

1. An introduction to Confucianism by Xinzhong Yao
2. Great Learning
3. Doctrine of the Mean
4. Analects
5. Mencius
6. Classic of Poetry
7. Book of Documents
8. Book of Rites
9. Book of Changes
10. Spring and Autumn Annals

While you are reading these books, study classical Chinese until you can read the classics in their original form. You can get all the books on the internet if you look long enough and you can study classical Chinese on the internet. In your free time, besides studying the classics, practice calligraphy, poetry, painting, music, and the board game Go. Good luck.

There's two other major novels from the era, the Plum in the Golden Vase, and the Unofficial History of the Scholars. All of these novels, including the great four, were all written in vernacular Chinese from at least the Ming Dynasty.
If you wanted to read stuff that's from earlier in Classical Chinese, there's poetry and prose. Du Fu and Li Bo are considered the two best Tang poets, and cover a variety of themes, given both lived through the High Tang and then the An Lushan Rebellion. Sima Xiangru is considered a great Han poet, and Cao Zhi (son of Cao Cao, himself a good poet) the best of the Jian'an period. In terms of major classic collections, the Classic of Poetry, aka the Shijing, is a very ancient foundational anthology of poetry that influenced all following poetry. Similarly important and early are the Songs of Chu, aka the Chuci, which is the second major foundational poetic anthology.
For classical prose, of course the early philosophers and their works, Mencius and Xunzi for the Confucians, Dao De Jing and Zhuangzi (this one is by far my favourite) for Daoism, the Book of Lord Shang and the Hanfeizi for Legalism, the Mozi for Mohism etc. There’s many more philosophers after this, like Wang Chong, but I’m less familiar with this period. Also major history texts, like the Book of Han and Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian.
There's also the early vernacular plays of the Yuan dynasty, I think there's an anthology of them by Columbia press.

This may be a bit of a reach, but does anybody here happen to know any Classical Chinese? How did you learn it? I want to learn it to read poetry and philosophy, but I'm not sure if it's even possible if I don't know any Modern Chinese.