The Four Lost Classics: An Essay in Readership

Abstract

The Four Lost Classics are the first four parts of a silk manuscript that was archaeologically retrieved at Mawangdui, Hunan, in 1973. This essay explores the place of the Four Lost Classics in the textual, historical and intellectual landscape of the early imperial period (to ca. 100 BCE). It argues that the texts present us with a unique opportunity to fathom the modes of textual production current at the time; it further argues that an awareness of these modes of textual production should underlie any philosophical reading of the Four Classics and of other early imperial texts.