Reading Medieval Chinese Poetry: Text, Context, and Culture

Description

Nine renowned sinologists present a range of studies that display the riches of medieval Chinese verse in varied guises. All major verse-forms, including shi, fu, and ci, are examined, with a special focus on poetry's negotiation with tradition and historical context. Dozens of previously untranslated works are here rendered in English for the first time, and readers will enter a literary culture that was deeply infused with imperatives of wit, learning, and empathy. Among the diverse topics met with in this volume are metaphysical poetry as a medium of social exchange, the place of ruins in Chinese poetry, the reality and imaginary of frontier borderlands, the enigma of misattribution, and how a 19th-century Frenchwoman discovered Tang poetry for the Western world. Contributors include Timothy Wai Keung Chan, Robert Joe Cutter, Ronald Egan, David R. Knechtges, Paul W. Kroll, Stephen Owen, Wendy Swartz, Ding Xiang Warner, and Pauline Yu. Contents Contributors Introduction Paul W. Kroll Trading Literary Competence: Exchange Poetry in the Eastern Jin Wendy Swartz Shen Who Couldn’t Write: Literary Relationships at the Court of Liu Jun Robert Joe Cutter Ruin and Remembrance in Classical Chinese Literature: The “Fu On The Ruined City” by Bao Zhao David R. Knechtges An Offering to the Prince: Wang Bo’s Apology for Poetry Ding Xiang Warner Beyond Border and Boudoir: The Frontier in the Poetry of the Four Elites of Early Tang Timothy Wai Keung Chan Heyue yingling ji and the Attributes of High Tang Poetry Paul W. Kroll Who Wrote That? Attribution in Northern Song Ci Stephen Owen When There Is a Parallel Text in Prose: Reading Lu You’s 1170 Yangzi River Journey in Poetry and Prose Ronald Egan Judith Gautier and the Invention of Chinese Poetry Pauline Yu Collective Bibliography Index