Wang Yonam: Introduction to Commentary 1
*Introduction to Commentary* lays the foundation for the organization and study of ancient texts. *Introduction to Commentary* is a translation of Wang Yaonan's *Outline of Commentary*, published by the Chinese Language and Literature Publishing House. Commentary is a new discipline that combines philology with the practical work of organizing ancient texts; it studies the content and methods of annotations attached to documents and explores their theoretical rules. Annotation is one of the most important tasks in organizing ancient texts. Its purpose lies precisely in bridging the gap between the past and the present. No matter how much ancient texts have been articulated and concretized during their time, as time passes, language changes, names and objects shift, and the meanings of vocabulary also change significantly. For this reason, without annotations, it becomes difficult for later generations to understand. Furthermore, the works of artists and writers who pursued evocative and beautiful language intentionally used difficult characters to show off their extensive knowledge; as time passed, these sentences gradually drifted further away from spoken language. In other words, a barrier of written language emerged between the people of the past and the modern. This is precisely why annotations became necessary; it is both a valuable legacy bequeathed to us by the ancients and a burden left behind. Regarding the motivation and main points of writing this book, the author Wang Yaonan stated the following: "The scope of organizing and researching ancient texts is vast, but its foundation lies in annotations. If we can study the annotation work accumulated by scholars of the past and present during the process of organizing ancient texts from a theoretical perspective, we can introduce relatively systematic knowledge related to annotations and, at the same time, present the internal rules they possess."
Korean title: 주석학개론 1
Korean author: 왕요남
Korean publisher: 한국고전번역원
ISBN-13: 9788928405015
