How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology / Edition 1

by Zong-qi Cai

Overview

In this "guided" anthology, experts lead students through the major genres and eras of Chinese poetry from antiquity to the modern time. The volume is divided into 6 chronological sections and features more than 140 examples of the best shi, sao, fu, ci, and qu poems. A comprehensive introduction and extensive thematic table of contents highlight the thematic, formal, and prosodic features of Chinese poetry, and each chapter is written by a scholar who specializes in a particular period or genre. Poems are presented in Chinese and English and are accompanied by a tone-marked romanized version, an explanation of Chinese linguistic and poetic conventions, and recommended reading strategies. Sound recordings of the poems are available online free of charge. These unique features facilitate an intense engagement with Chinese poetical texts and help the reader derive aesthetic pleasure and insight from these works as one could from the original.

The companion volume How to Read Chinese Poetry Workbook presents 100 famous poems (56 are new selections) in Chinese, English, and romanization, accompanied by prose translation, textual notes, commentaries, and recordings.

Contributors: Robert Ashmore (Univ. of California, Berkeley); Zong-qi Cai; Charles Egan (San Francisco State); Ronald Egan (Univ. of California, Santa Barbara); Grace Fong (McGill); David R. Knechtges (Univ. of Washington); Xinda Lian (Denison); Shuen-fu Lin (Univ. of Michigan); William H. Nienhauser Jr. (Univ. of Wisconsin); Maija Bell Samei; Jui-lung Su (National Univ. of Singapore); Wendy Swartz (Columbia); Xiaofei Tian (Harvard); Paula Varsano (Univ. of California, Berkeley); Fusheng Wu (Univ. of Utah)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231139410
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	12/28/2007
Series:	How to Read Chinese Literature
Edition description:	Bilingual
Pages:	456
Sales rank:	585,596
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Zong-qi Cai is professor of Chinese and comparative literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of The Matrix of Lyric Transformation: Poetic Modes and Self-Presentation in Early Chinese Pentasyllabic Poetry (Michigan, 1996) and Configurations of Comparative Poetics: Three Perspectives on Western and Chinese Literary Criticism (Hawai'i, 2002), and is the editor of A Chinese Literary Mind: Culture, Creativity, and Rhetoric in Wenxin dialong (Stanford, 2001) and Chinese Aesthetics: The Ordering of Literature, the Arts, and the Universe in the Six Dynasties (Hawai'i, 2004).

Table of Contents

Thematic Contents
A Note on How to Use This Anthology
Acknowledgments
Major Chinese Dynasties
List of Symbols
Introduction: Major Aspects of Chinese Poetry
Zong-qi Cai
Part 1 Pre-Qin Times
1. Tetrasyllabic Shi Poetry: The Book of Poetry (Shijing)
William H. Nienhauser
2. Sao Poetry: The Lyrics of Chu (Chuci)
Fusheng Wu
Part 2 The Han Dynasty
3. Fu Poetry: An Ancient-Style Rhapsody (Gufu)
David R. Knechtges
4. Shi Poetry: Music Bureau Poems (Yuefu)
Jui-lung Su
5. Pentasyllabic Shi Poetry: The "Nineteen Old Poems"
Zong-qi Cai
Part 3 The Six Dynasties
6. Pentasyllabic Shi Poetry: Landscape and Farmstead Poems
Wendy Swartz
7. Pentasyllabic Shi Poetry: New Topics
Xiaofei Tian
Part 4 The Tang Dynasty
8. Recent-Style Shi Poetry: Pentasyllabic Regulated Verse (Wuyan Lüshi)
Zong-qi Cai
9. Recent-Style Shi Poetry: Heptasyllabic Regulated Verse (Qiyan Lüshi)
Robert Ashmore
10. Recent-Style Shi Poetry: Quatrains (Jueju)
Charles Egan
11. Ancient-Style Shi Poetry: A Revival
Paula Varsano
Part 5 The Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty
12. Ci Poetry: Short Song Lyrics (Xiaoling)
Maija Bell Samei
13. Ci Poetry: Long Song Lyrics (Manci)
Xinda Lian
14. Ci Poetry: Long Song Lyrics on Objects (Yongwu Ci)
Shuen-fu Lin
15. Shi Poetry: Ancient and Recent Styles
Ronald Egan
Part 6 The Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties
16. Qu Poetry: Song Poems (Sanqu) of the Yuan Dynasty
Xinda Lian
17. Shi Poetry of the Ming and Qing Dynasties
Grace S. Fong
18. A Synthesis: Rhythm, Syntax, and Vision of Chinese Poetry
Zong-qi Cai
Phonetic Transcriptions of Entering-Tone Characters
Abbreviations of Primary Texts
Contributors
Glossary-Index

What People are Saying About This

Pauline Yu

This valuable guidebook offers multiple routes toward understanding the vast and varied traditions and practices of classical Chinese poetry, from its beginnings through the Qing dynasty. Close readings of individual poems-including the 'chestnuts' we all love to teach-are grounded in useful discussions of literary-historical and cultural contexts. A cross-cutting discussion of themes suggests ways in which the poems can speak to each other across boundaries of genre and dynasty. And the unusually extensive attention paid to the sound and prosody of Chinese poetry will be especially welcome to student and scholar alike.

— Pauline Yu, president of the American Council of Learned Societies

Editorial Reviews

By presenting poems in so many different forms: Chinese characters, Romanization, English translation, audio files, stress maps, and transliteration, the book enables the reader – no matter what her background in Chinese language, to grasp much of what is going on.

BLT Not Just a Sandwich

The strengths of the book . . . appear in the elegance and facility with which the contributors engage with and explain the language beneath (not beyond) translation. . . . In its scholarly awareness of the relationship between poetic lines and historical context, readers of poetry in any language can learn from the critical traditions, as much as the poems, of Chinese poetry, and glean from How to Read Chinese Poetry the answer to the question of how to read poetry.

Rain Taxi - Lucas Klein

This book successfully achieves its goal of helping students to overcome linguistic difficulties and to appreciate Chinese poems in their original settings. This is an excellent guided anthology of selected representative works in pre-modern Chinese poetry, and is suitable for students majoring in East Asian/Chinese Studies, teachers of Chinese literature, and readers who want to learn how to better appreciate various forms and genres of Chinese poetry.

Studies on Aisa - Yue Zhang

An anthology notable for its ease of use and clear and effective presentation.

Reference and Research Book News

An innovative guided anthology of classical Chinese. . . . A reader with some background in Chinese language will especially benefit from this anthology that encourages one to engage with the Chinese texts more directly. I recommend this book to anyone who wishes to understand how classical Chinese poetry works. One will also expect to see this anthology appear soon on the reading lists of courses on Chinese poetry and Chinese literature in general.

Monumenta Serica - Tian Yuan Tan