A Brief History of Eight-Part Essay

This book is the result of Lu Qian's research on literary styles such as "Eight-legged Essay". The book has seven chapters in total, including "Variations of the Classical Meanings of Tie Kuo", "The Structure of Eight-Part Articles", "Evolution before Zhengjia", "Style after Longwan", "Famous Eight-Part Writers in the Early Qing Dynasty", "The Decline of Eight-Part Style" and "Documents on Eight-Part Articles". It conducts in-depth and detailed research on the origin, article structure, rise and fall of the Eight-part essay, famous writers, etc. Since the abolition of the imperial examination, the eight-part essay has been ignored by scholars for a long time. Lu Qian believed that "the eight-part essay has a history of more than 500 years and should occupy a considerable position in the history of literature. It cannot be obliterated just because of temporary likes and dislikes." Therefore, he wrote this book while teaching the "Ming and Qing Literature" course at Jinan University. This book provides detailed and reference materials for the study of eight-legged essay.