Patrick Hanan

Patrick Dewes Hanan (January 4, 1927 - April 26, 2014) was a New Zealand born academic who was the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University. A sinologist, he was a historian of Chinese literature, especially pre-twentieth century vernacular fiction.

Hanan was born in Morrinsville, New Zealand and raised on a farm in the Waikato where his father retired from a career in dentistry. Hanan studied English at Auckland University before going to England, where he enrolled to study Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies at University of London, taking his undergraduate degree in 1953 and beginning his teaching career there. He spent the academic year 1957-58 in Beijing. Soon after completing his doctoral work and receiving his doctoral degree in 1961, he was recruited to teach on a temporary basis at Stanford University in 1961, then a regular position there in 1963. In 1968, he moved to Harvard, where he taught until his retirement at age 70 in 1997. He was chair of the department of East Asian Languages and Director of the Harvard-Yenching Library, among other services.

A state-of-the-field article written by Robert Hegel, of Washington University in 1994 grouped Hanan with scholars who combine Eastern and Western critical approaches, both close reading of texts typical of Western schools and intense scrutiny of Chinese pingdian, or commentator/ editors. Hanan's first book-length monograph, The Chinese Short Story. Studies in Dating, Authorship, and Composition (1973) was a "pioneering effort to utilize stylistic analysis to group huaben stories of Yuan and Ming periods that exhibit similar characteristics." Hanan was careful to accommodate evidence from more conventional analysis, the reviewer continued, with the result that "his classification scheme is extremely useful in general despite the reservations some have concerning specific details." David Roy, University of Chicago, wrote of Hanan's "amazing erudition and fecundity ... one of those rare scholars of whom it may be said that his work has permanently altered the landscape of the field." Robert Hegel reviewed Hanan's collection of essays, Chinese Fiction of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, in the sinologolical journal T'oung Pao, and said "Any scholarly writing by Patrick Hanan ... is to be welcomed; regardless of topic, it is sure to be worth our careful consideration. This essay collection marks yet another direction taken in his four-decade long career of distinguished publications, and it is as important as his previous writings.

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