Andrew H. Plaks

Andrew Henry Plaks (; born 1945) is an American sinologist who specializes in the study of the vernacular fiction of the Ming and Qing dynasties. From 1973 to 2007, he taught at Princeton University, becoming full professor in 1980. He moved to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2007, where he became Professor of East Asian Studies.

In 1968, he married Livia Basch (1947–2013), and they had two sons, Jason and Eric.

Academic career Plaks studied as an undergraduate in the Department of Oriental Studies at Princeton University, graduating summa cum laude with an A.B. in 1967. He stayed on at Princeton University for graduate study in East Asian Studies. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1973 with a dissertation on Archetype and allegory in the Hung-Lou Meng. He was subsequently offered a position in the Department of East Asian Studies at Princeton University, becoming an associate professor in 1976, and a full professor in 1980. Between April–June 2005, he was a Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala, Sweden. In 2007, he retired from Princeton University, and moved to Israel to take up a position at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he became Professor of East Asian Studies. He identifies a "figural density" and establishes that the key to understanding the novels is the use of irony, by which he means "every possible disjunction between what is said and what is meant." According to Plaks, the novels ask serious questions about sexuality, selfhood, heroism, power, and reality, while offering serious Neo-Confucian answers. Ropp says that although not everybody may agree with all of Plaks's ideas, he has pioneered the sophisticated criticism of the traditional Chinese novel, and his emphasis on the use of irony in the novels is especially important. The second volume, covering chapters 28–53, was published in 2021.