Warring States Papers (Volume 1)

Book excerpt: Warring States Papers seeks to apply standard philological methods to major unsolved textual problems: (a) to establish the nature and interrelations of the texts, including the recognition of interpolations and of text growth generally; (b) to date the texts or their constituent layers; and finally (c) to read the history of the period from that newly available source material. In both fields, with their core of culturally protected texts, these fundamental preliminaries have tended to be overlooked. The Project's revolution, in both its fields of concern, has consisted in large part of not overlooking them. Once the basic questions have been asked and at least in part answered, the history of each period is more readily available for further study as such, and for comparison with similar developments both ancient and modern. New contributions developing this methodologically fresh beginning are welcome. To encourage them, and to ensure variety in each annual volume, the journal emphasizes short articles rather than long disquisitions.