The development of Confucianism is traced through the development of its canon. It is therefore helpful to first list the main Confucian texts. The orthodox canon of Confucian texts, as eventually formulated by Zhu Xi, is the so-called "Four Books and Five Classics". These are:

The Four Books

The Great Learning

The Doctrine of the Mean

The Analects of Confucius

The Mencius

The Five Classics

The Classic of Poetry

The Classic of History

The Classic of Rites

The Classic of Changes

The Spring and Autumn Annals

A sixth book, the Classic of Music, is referred to but was lost by the time of the Han Dynasty.

There is a further canon known as the Thirteen Classics.

There is considerable debate about which, if Confucius himself directly wrote any, of these books. He did not write the main source of his quotations, the Analects. As with many other spiritual leaders such as Siddhartha Gautama, Jesus, or Socrates, our main source of Confucius' thought, the Analects, was written down by his disciples. Some of the core canon is argued to have been written by Confucius himself, such as the Spring and Autumn Annals. There is considerable debate about this, however.

This factor is further complicated by the "Burning of the Books and Burying of the Scholars", a massive suppression of dissenting thought during the Qin Dynasty, more than two centuries after Confucius' death. The emperor Qin Shi Huang destroyed a great number of books, possibly destroying other books written by Confucius or his disciples in the process.

Zhu Xi formulated the current canon of Four Books and Five Classics. Many versions contain his extensive commentaries on the books. The fact that his specific version of the Confucian canon became the core canon can be seen as an example of his influence in Confucianism.