Classic Chinese Poems Of Mourning And Texts Of Lament

"Watered 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 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 orations. 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"--

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.

"McCraw enables the reader of English to approximate the experience of encountering the peerless lyricist's poems in Chinese." --Sino-Platonic Papers "This is a remarkable labor of love from an enthusiastic admirer of Du Fu, and should be recommended to all lovers of Chinese poetry." --China Review International, Spring 1996

This provocative study explores issues of gender in Tang-dynasty literature and culture, and their meaning for society as a whole. Drawing on a comprehensive range of historical, literary, and social texts, Jowen R. Tung unravels the complex mechanisms of one of the world's oldest patriarchal systems. With remarkable depth and originality of analysis, the author persuasively applies contemporary feminist theory to Tang dynasty poetry, narrative, and anecdotal literature. Interpreting both well-known and obscure works in fresh ways, Tung sheds light on areas long left shadowed or ignored. In the process, she paints a far darker picture of a period traditionally known as the 'golden age.'

With this groundbreaking collection Classical Chinese Poetry, translated and edited by the renowned poet and translator David Hinton, a new generation will be introduced to the work that riveted Ezra Pound and transformed modern poetry. The Chinese poetic tradition is the largest and longest continuous tradition in world literature, and this rich and far-reaching anthology of nearly five hundred poems provides a comprehensive account of its first three millennia (1500 BCE to 1200 CE), the period during which virtually all its landmark developments took place. Unlike earlier anthologies of Chinese poetry, Hinton's book focuses on a relatively small number of poets, providing selections that are large enough to re-create each as a fully realized and unique voice. New introductions to each poet's work provide a readable history, told for the first time as a series of poetic innovations forged by a series of master poets. From the classic texts of Chinese philosophy to intensely personal lyrics, from love poems to startling and strange perspectives on nature, Hinton has collected an entire world of beauty and insight. And in his eye-opening translations, these ancient poems feel remarkably fresh and contemporary, presenting a literature both radically new and entirely resonant, in Classical Chinese Poetry.

In this first serious study of Hanshan (“Cold Mountain”), Paul Rouzer discusses some seventy poems of the iconic Chinese poet who lived sometime during the Tang dynasty (618–907). Hanshan’s poems gained a large readership in English-speaking countries following the publication of Jack Kerouac’s novel The Dharma Bums (1958) and Gary Snyder’s translations (which began to appear that same year), and they have been translated into English more than any other body of Chinese verse. Rouzer investigates how Buddhism defined the way that believers may have read Hanshan in premodern times. He proposes a Buddhist poetics as a counter-model to the Confucian assumptions of Chinese literary thought and examines how texts by Kerouac, Snyder, and Jane Hirshfield respond to the East Asian Buddhist tradition.