"Literature" in the Perspective of Late Qing Encyclopedias:An Inquiry on Huang Ren's Efforts as a Compiler

The accumulation of the intellectual innovations in a whole society owes a great deal to the Encyclopedia and the Textbook. On the eve of the collapse of the Qing dynasty, Huang Ren and Zhongguo wenxue shi(The History of Chinese Literature)at the Guoxue fulun she 国学扶轮社(Rotary Club for National Learning) in Shanghai. Considering that Huang was teaching “Guowen (national literature) and “Guoxue (national learning) at Dongwu University, this paper intends to explore how the concept of in modern China emerged in the context of late Qing encyclopedias by focusing on Huang's efforts as a compiler. As one of the first generation of professional literature educators in modern China, Huang's encyclopedic perspective based on the modern classification of disciplines is more considerable than his well-known poetic skills. Facing the trend of integrating western learning into the east, such a perspective was not rare among the intellectuals of late Qing China; however, there were few who could successfully carry it out through encyclopedias or textbooks. This paper tries to put together Huang's three scholarly actions, that is, the literary critic, the writing of textbook and the compilation of encyclopedic dictionary, thereby illustrate the construction of modern intellectual system in a transitional society.