Front. Lit. Stud. China 2011, 5(4): 477–510 DOI 10.1007/s11702-011-0139-5 Zong-qi CAI () Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA E-mail: z-cai@illinois.edu RESEARCH ARTICLE Zong-qi CAI The Early Philosophical Discourse on Language and Reality and Lu Ji’s and Liu Xie’s Theories of Literary Creation © Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag 2011 Abstract This paper is an attempt to investigate how Lu Ji and Liu Xie develop their theories of literary creation on the foundation of the early philosophical discourse on language and reality. The first part of the paper examines various key terms, concepts, and paradigms developed in the philosophical discourse. The second part pursues a close reading of Lu’s and Liu’s texts to demonstrate how ingeniously they adapt and integrate those terms, concepts, and paradigms to accomplish two important tasks: to establish a broad framework for conceptualizing literary creation and to differentiate the complex mental and linguistic endeavors at different stages of the creative process. The paper ends with some general reflections on the impact of the two essays on the subsequent development of Chinese literary and aesthetic thoughts. Keywords theories of literary creation, Lu Ji, Liu Xie, yi-xiang-yan (conception-image-words) Lu Ji’s 䰚机 (261–303) Wen fu 文赋 (An exposition on literature) and Liu Xie’s 勰 (ca. 465–ca. 522˅“Shensi” 神思 (Spirit and thought), a chapter of his magnum opus Wenxin diaolong 文心雕龙 (Literary mind and the carving of dragons), are arguably the most comprehensive and insightful expositions on literary creation in Chinese literary criticism. When studying these two essays, an intriguing question looms large in our mind: what is it that enabled Lu and Liu to formulate their sophisticated theories at a time when the Chinese were just beginning to talk about literature as an autonomous pursuit? This paper is an