Abstract: “Writer should learn philology first” was first presented by the Tang writer official Han Yu (768-824), and became an influential proposition of literature in the Qing dynasty. Qing textualists’ effectively reinterpretation of it enabled the proposition to become a classic statement to demonstrate philology’s importance to literary creation, and the position gradually developed into a common sense recognized by various literary schools in the late Qing period and finally entered the literary history and textbooks during the Republican period. To describe the course of how the proposition emerged, disseminated and developed into a common sense will illuminate the understanding of Qing textualists’ contribution to literature, the relationship between literary theories in the Qing and previous dynasties, and the formation mechanism of common sense in the history of Chinese literature.

Key words: philology, Han Yu, textualism (Study of Han Learning) in the Qing dynasty