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Talk:Ancient Chinese literature

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The Four Great Classical Novels really aren't "ancient" Chinese literature

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I don't mean to be rude, because I can see a lot of work has been put into this section, but the Four Great Classical Novels really aren't "ancient". The oldest novel, Water Margin, was likely written during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) and the most recent one, Dream of the Red Chamber, was published well into the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), which, to reiterate, really isn't ancient. These novels likely don't belong in this article, but rather than delete them outright, I thought I'd raise the issue here first. I suppose a broader question would be: How do we define "ancient" Chinese literature. If you go to the article on History of China, it defines "Ancient China" as stretching from the Xia Dynasty (2070-1600 BCE) to the Warring States period (476-221 BCE). From there through the end of the Qing Dynasty, the article describes China as "Imperial China", which is the period during which much of the literature in this article is discussed. What are people's thoughts on this? Tigercompanion25 (talk) 14:47, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]