Wen Xuan
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An imperial prince selects a thousand years of Chinese writing into thirty scrolls arranged by genre, and thereby fixes which earlier works later generations would read.
- selection by literary merit, stated as a principle
- the classics deliberately excluded as a different order of writing
- arrangement by genre as an implicit theory of form
- canon fixed by examination use
The anthology gathers some seven hundred pieces by around one hundred and thirty authors from the Warring States to the compiler's own day, arranged first by genre and then chronologically. The preface states the selection principle: pieces chosen for literary quality rather than doctrinal or historical value, explicitly excluding the classics and the philosophers on the grounds that they are a different kind of writing. Because it became a set text for the civil examinations, its choices determined the canon, and a number of the works it preserves survive only in it.
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