Volume IV of A History of Chinese Classical Scholarship treats the rise of classical scholarship during the first two centuries of the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) based on the philological handling of the texts of the Confucian classics. This new paradigm overturns the interpretive approach based on Neo-Confucian philosophical speculation that had held sway during the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, a period stretching from the mid-tenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries. The father of philology during the early Qing was Gu Yanwu. Two chapters introduce his life and works, together with an analysis of two disciplines he was responsible for either founding or popularizing, epigraphy and historical phonology. Next follows a chapter on two reclusive scholars, Wang Fuzhi and Zang Lin, who chose eremitism for self-preservation during the chaos of the Manchu conquest of the Ming dynasty. Two chapters follow and present the founders of the discipline of textual criticism, most prominently Yan Ruoqu, Mao Qiling, and Hu Wei. The family scholarship of the Huis of Suzhou - Hui Zhouti, Hui Shiqi, and Hui Dong - are then contrasted to the model of the master-disciple transmission of learning as exemplified by Jiang Yong and Dai Zhen. Subsequent chapters treat famous bibliophiles, booksellers, editors, and restorers of lost texts compiled through collecting scattered quotes preserved in encyclopedias. Classics selected for special treatment include the Book of Documents, the Book of Poetry, the Book of Changes, the Rites of Zhou and the Close to Elegance onomasticon.
David B. Honey is a longstanding member of the department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at Brigham Young University, where he teaches classical Chinese language and literature. He graduated in Oriental Languages from the University of California Los Angeles in 1980 and earned his M.A. in 1984 and Ph.D. in 1988 from the University of California Berkeley. For the past twenty years, he has been researching the history of Chinese classical scholarship. In 2012, Dr. Honey published in Chinese a short history of Western classical scholarship published by Eastern Normal University Press and is working on a Chinese-language study of Biblical scholarship.
Impressive and substantial. I appreciate the scope of this work and the depth of scholarship that has gone into it. Everything is presented clearly and in admirable detail. It is a magnificent work." - William G. Boltz, Professor Emeritus of Classical Chinese, University of Washington ""Brilliant and monumental. It introduces the English reader into the vast and exceedingly rich world of classical Chinese scholarship, which arguably constituted the core intellectual tradition in China for almost three millennia. David B. Honey's knowledge of the sources, both primary and secondary, and his grasp of the central issues of this long history are quite stunning and establish a gold mine of information that will assuredly be searched and tapped by specialists and other intellectually engaged readers for many decades, if not for centuries, to come."" - Stephen W. Durrant, Professor Emeritus of Chinese Language and Literature, University of Oregon ""The History of Chinese Classical Scholarship is a uniquely ambitious endeavor. Panoramic in perspective and impressively rich in detail, it judiciously balances traditional views with current, including comparative, approaches. Specialists and general readers alike will find much to explore in David Honey's account of one of the world's greatest scholarly traditions."" - Martin Kern, Joanna and Greg '84 Professor of Chinese Literature, Princeton University
