This volume is the first complete English rendition of the 45 famous tales in the monumental anthology masterfully selected and edited by Lu Xun (1881-1936). It is the most distinctive, authoritative, and influential chuanqi collection thus far, and many of the pieces are rendered for the first time. This is an important contribution to the field of Chinese studies in the English-speaking world.
This volume is the first complete English rendition of the 45 famous tales in the monumental anthology masterfully selected and edited by Lu Xun (1881-1936). It is the most distinctive, authoritative, and influential chuanqi collection thus far, and many of the pieces are rendered for the first time. This is an important contribution to the field of Chinese studies in the English-speaking world.
"This volume is the first complete English rendition of the 45 famous tales in the monumental anthology masterfully selected and edited by Lu Xun (1881-1936). It is the most distinctive, authoritative, and influential chuanqi collection thus far, and many of the pieces are rendered for the first time. This is an important contribution to the field of Chinese studies in the English-speaking world"--Publisher's website.
The book provides the most up-to-date and comprehensive survey of the genre of Tang tales in English, including discussions of the numerous Chinese studies from the last decade. Tang Tales itself contains the first annotated translations of these famous stories, which are deciphered and interpreted specifically for students and scholars interested in the medieval Chinese literature. Following the model of intertextual readings employed by Glen Dudbridge in The Tale of Li Wa (Oxford, 1983), the annotation points to the resonances to the classical texts; the translator's notes following each translation then explain how these references expand the meaning of the text. In addition to six translations of the major tales (chuanqi, "transmitting the strange"), there is also a rendition of a fantastic tale by Liu Zongyuan, suggesting close ties with popular and oral literature. The appended glossary of terms marks the first attempt to create such a reference for readers and scholars of Tang tales that will be of use in reading other tales as well. The meticulous scholarship of this book elevates it above all existing collections of these stories, and the inclusion of the standard introduction to the Tang tales for graduate students and researchers engenders a deeper appreciation.
With commentary and annotations throughout, Ming Dynasty Tales: A Guided Reader presents for the first time in English 10 key stories from China's Ming Dynasty era. Casting new light on this significant period in Chinese literary history, these tales bring Ming era China vividly to life, from its chaotic beginnings to its imperial heyday. As well as bearing witness to social change across the 100-year life of the Yuan Dynasty from 1260 to 1368, these tales tackle key themes of war and peace and Confucian values of loyalty, filiality, chastity, and righteousness.
With commentary and annotations throughout, Ming Dynasty Tales: A Guided Reader presents for the first time in English 10 key stories from China's Ming Dynasty era. Casting new light on this significant period in Chinese literary history, these tales bring Ming era China vividly to life, from its chaotic beginnings to its imperial heyday. As well as bearing witness to social change across the 100-year life of the Yuan Dynasty from 1260 to 1368, these tales tackle key themes of war and peace and Confucian values of loyalty, filiality, chastity, and righteousness.
Bathed with the blood and tears of countless poets and authors and naturally expressing the most heartfelt emotions of ancient peoples, poems of mourning and texts of lament stand out in classical Chinese literature as brilliant and unique. Composed and celebrated over 3000 years, they are central to the Chinese literary tradition but have been largely unknown to English readers. Including over 100 major pieces by leading literary figures from 800 BCE 1800, this is the first English anthology of classic Chinese poems of mourning and texts of sacrificial offering. With annotated translations by leading scholars and reading guides accompanying each piece, this book reveals a powerful literary heritage to students and serious readers of Chinese literature, history and civilization.
This book considers the contemporary political formula of the “Chinese Dream” in the light of the treatment of dreams in Chinese literary history since antiquity. Sinic literary and philosophical texts document an extensive spectrum of dream possibilities: starting with Zhuangzi’s eminent butterfly dream, an early example of the inversion of the dreamer’s reality, through to confusing visions of the spiritual realm. In classical dramas, novels, and ghost stories, dreams see the earthly realm enter into conflict with higher realms of existence. They indulge the dreamer’s quest for sensual pleasures, but then spiritual beings relentlessly harvest the dreamers’ life energy. Dreams promise spiritual enlightenment – only to abandon the dreamer in a state of utter confusion. In the early twentieth century, traditional dream knowledge is abandoned in favour or Freudian episodes of sexual repression. In this context, the collective national dream emerges as an unexpected vehicle of the pained individual’s hope for national rejuvenation.
Fourteen research papers on traditional China. They form three groups, each mixing discursive pieces with more technical research: books and publishing; medieval narrative and culture; vernacular culture. Fundamentally these studies develop a more open way of reading China’s traditional narrative literature.
