French Literature Reviews - 2026
Benoît Vermander, How to Read Chinese Classics?
Comparative and World Literature
How to read Chinese classics? How to read them on their own terms, but also through the lens of our own questions?
This book presents the entirety of ancient Chinese textual production alongside the variety of interpretive approaches applied to it. It reveals the organic unity of this textual corpus—built around a reflective understanding of our bodily experiences—and details the debates that run through it, which largely remain our own: marking differences in gender, generation, and class; how the symbolic order is constructed and challenged; and the political mastery of language.
A final section uncovers the coherence and sophistication of the compositional structures that govern these texts. Highlighting these structures refreshes our understanding of the Laozi, the Zhuangzi, and the Analects of Confucius. The book's epilogue charts a course toward a shared reading of the classics—those touchstones around which humanity encounters one another, breaks apart, and continuously reconstructs itself.
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Benoît Vermander is a professor at Fudan University (Shanghai), where he teaches religious anthropology and the hermeneutics of Chinese classics. In his publications, he explores how societies, religions, and cultures construct their shared lives by drawing upon and intersecting their memorial, textual, and ritual resources. With Les Belles Lettres, he has published Versailles, La République et la Nation (2018), L’Homme et le grain with Alain Bonjean (2021), and Comment lire les classiques chinois ? (2022).
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chronological Landmarks
Chapter I: What Is a Chinese Classic?
Chapter II: How to Read
Chapter III: "Observing Water Is Quite an Art"
Chapter IV: Rite, Father, Name
Chapter V: Number and Norm
Chapter VI: What the Text Writes Without Explicitly Saying It
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index of Names
Index of Concepts
Acknowledgments
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An article about this book can be read on en-attendant-nadeau.fr:
"Classifying the Classics", by Luolan Wang (online February 22, 2023).
A sinological work written by a Western author inevitably raises an initial question: to what extent is the book faithful to irreducibly "Chinese" modes of thought, and has the author respected the meaning of the original text as far as possible? Benoît Vermander—a professor at Fudan University (Shanghai) and author of a diverse, prolific, and original body of work—seeks to highlight the compositional structures and modes of thought specific to Chinese classics. He approaches them by opening up to a rhetorical and experiential reading of these writings, taking into account their unstated content and the porous boundary they share with the vast number of commentaries they inspired in China. At the same time, he insists on the obvious necessity of considering the socio-historical context of the classics and their various layers of composition. Paying attention to their microstructures reveals how they can both integrate into and confront various movements of thought.
The study of ancient Chinese literature encompasses a vast and diverse textual corpus that has sustained centuries of commentary, philosophical inquiry, and philological debate. Works such as the Analects of Confucius, the Laozi, and the Zhuangzi occupy a central place in this tradition, shaping intellectual frameworks and socio-historical structures across generations. Scholars examining these writings often navigate the complex relationship between indigenous modes of thought and contemporary hermeneutic strategies, seeking to understand how classical texts construct meaning through both explicit argumentation and implicit compositional structures.
Benoît Vermander presents an overview of ancient Chinese textual production, examining the organic unity of the corpus alongside the interpretive approaches applied to it. The book details debates running through the texts concerning differences in gender, generation, and class, as well as the political mastery of language and the construction of the symbolic order. Readers interested in comparative literature and East Asian philosophical traditions may find it a relevant resource.