Chinese · 465–522
Liu Xie served as a minor official in the Liang dynasty and spent years at the Dinglin monastery cataloguing Buddhist scriptures. His single great work, the Wenxin diaolong (The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons), written around 501 CE, is the most comprehensive and systematic work of literary criticism in the Chinese tradition. He later took Buddhist monastic vows and died in obscurity.