Ways of Literary History Writing and the Discourse of Jian'an Fenggu.

Today, in the arena of Classical Chinese literature study, the term Jian'an fenggu is generally conceptualized as the representative feature of the literary works, especially poetry, of the Jian'an period (196-220). Some use the terms Han-Wei fenggu or Jian'an fengli instead, and "Han-Wei" refers also to the Jian'an period. However, despite the popularity of the term, the explicit content of Jian'an fenggu has been an issue under constant controversy. Re-examining the literary histories since the late Qing dynasty, one can notice the obvious growth of popularity of the term as well as rapid changes of its content. As a matter of fact, to conceptualize Jian'an fenggu as a representative feature of a literary epoch is a way of understanding literary history that comes along with the rise of new approaches to literary history writing. This paper traces how Jian'an fenggu becomes an unavoidable term in the literary history of the past few decades, in order to explain why the term is on the one hand widely adopted, yet on the other hand its meaning has never reached a consensus. This paper also tries to show how researches might be led astray by using the term casually without a full consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]