@ourobororoboruo @intewig quick response to a fascinating question! 文人 wenren is of course the older term, but had a whiff of disrepectability to you - 賣文為生 was not a positive descriptor. Li Yu of the Ming Dynasty is most famous of a self-consciously professional class of writers - Patrick Hanan's +
@ourobororoboruo @intewig book on Li Yu is excellent if you are interested. 作家 is an older binome that becomes repurposed in the 20thc once the term 專家, and -家 for expertise, become common - I assume it is a Japanese reconstruction of kanji for a modern purpose.
作家 as profession is also gained +
作家 as profession is also gained +
@ourobororoboruo @intewig via translation - with late Qing Lin Shu translations of Dickens, Dumas, et al., they become published as 世界作家. But progressive May Fourth writers were never fully comfortable with the term, bc of its association w commerce - doubly so when Mao basically posits 作家 and 革命+
@ourobororoboruo @intewig as oppositional. So the 1930s-40s phrase onward was often 文化工作者 'cultural worker' to stress that writing is a form of labor.
Sorry! not that short an answer!
Sorry! not that short an answer!
