Poems on Poetry: Literary Criticism by Yuan Haowen ??? (1190-1257)

by John Timothy Wixted

Overview

Originally published to critical acclaim in the Münchener Ostasiatische Studien Series (Bd. 33), Steiner, Wiesbaden 1982, this Quirin Press Revised Edition offers the original text with the following features:
- Older Wade-Giles transliteration fully updated and revised to Pinyin.
- Fully re-typeset and proofed for typographical errors and inconsistencies.
- Expanded index. - Fully revised by the author.

Keywords:
Yuan Haowen 元好問, 1190-1257 -- Criticism and interpretation.
Chinese poetry -- History and criticism -- Poetics.

Reviews of the original 1982 edition

[Yuan Haowen's poems on poetry] are devilishly hard to translate. Only someone at home in Chinese poetic tradition or at least capable of understanding the numerous commentators who have worked on these poems could ever hope to cope with all the difficulties involved. The present translation is excellent and the translator carefully presents an enormous amount of explanatory material which makes it possible for even the most obtuse to grasp not only the general meaning of these difficult verses, but even the subtle nuances contained in allusions culled from the entire poetic tradition.
Donald Holzman, (Orientalistische Literaturzeitung: 82.2 (1987), pp. 204-205)

The result is a study of Yuan Haowen's criticism on poetry which is truly of outstanding scholarship.
Yuan's poems are indeed like riddles. A few of them defied even the skill and scholarship of Dr. Wixted, as he freely admits. His study is, on the other side, a great tribute to the geniality of Yuan Haowen, the poet who wrote, seemingly with ease, these short poems which baffled, fascinated and challenged so many scholars who in the course of time have tried so hard to decipher Yuan's thoughts, so masterly expressed.
The Bibliography is a treasury of information in itself.
Eugen Feifel, (Monumenta Serica: 35 (1981-83), pp. 631-635)

Professor Wixted's work is now a very fine book. Of all the difficult kinds of texts in classical Chinese letters, perhaps poems on poetry are the most difficult to understand--because of their terse, dense, elliptical and highly allusive mode of discourse....The exact meanings of the terms of this vocabulary are often extremely difficult to determine since they seem to vary so much over time and from writer to writer. In dealing with such terms one has to keep in mind a series of overlapping contexts: (1) the individual critic's own body of writings, (2) the values and views of the group or 'school' to which he might belong, (3) his historical period and stage in the overall development of creative and critical writing, (4) the broader context of current intellectual discourse including philosophical and religious writings, and (5) the tradition of criticism up to his own time. It is very much to Wixted's credit that he is well aware of these contexts and how they interrelate and that he is able to draw upon this awareness to help explicate Yuan's poems.
[T]he advantages of the [book's] arrangement are significant: the reader has at his fingertips a self-contained package of materials--poetry as well as prose, including Chinese texts--by Yuan and others that supplies virtually everything needed to gain a thorough appreciation of what Yuan's 'Thirty Poems on Poetry' say and mean.
Richard John Lynn, (Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47.2 (Dec. 1987), pp. 696-715)

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781922169341
Publisher:	Quirin Press
Publication date:	10/14/2019
Series:	Quirin Pinyin Updated Editions (QPUE)
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	460
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.02(d)

Table of Contents

Additional Literary Criticism by Yuan Haowen

1. Further Series of Poems on Poetry 198

2. A Justification for Jin Dynasty Poetry: “Five Postface-Poems Written for the Zhongzhouji (Anthology of the Central Land)” 200

3. Abstract Comments: “Three Poems on Poetry” 206

4. The Chan (Zen) Metaphor: “On Feeling Prompted to Write: Four Poems” 210

5. Critical Views in Prose 213

6. A Concluding Poem on Poetic Genesis and Appreciation 222

Later Evaluation and Influence of Yuan Haowen 224

Appendices

A. Yuan Haowen’s Biography In Brief

1. Overview 229

2. Biographical Background to “Thirty Poems on Poetry” 230

B. Texts, Commentaries, and Studies of Yuan Haowen 235

C Du Fu and Dai Fugu: Two Series of Poems on Poetry 240

Conventions in Citation 246

Bibliography of Works Cited 251

Endnotes 281

Index 387

Editorial Reviews

Reviews of the original 1982 edition

[Yuan Haowen's poems on poetry] are devilishly hard to translate. Only someone at home in Chinese poetic tradition or at least capable of understanding the numerous commentators who have worked on these poems could ever hope to cope with all the difficulties involved. The present translation is excellent and the translator carefully presents an enormous amount of explanatory material which makes it possible for even the most obtuse to grasp not only the general meaning of these difficult verses, but even the subtle nuances contained in allusions culled from the entire poetic tradition.
Donald Holzman, Orientalistische Literaturzeitung: 82.2 (1987), pp. 204-205

The result is a study of Yuan Haowen's criticism on poetry which is truly of outstanding scholarship.
Yuan's poems are indeed like riddles. A few of them defied even the skill and scholarship of Dr. Wixted, as he freely admits. His study is, on the other side, a great tribute to the geniality of Yuan Haowen, the poet who wrote, seemingly with ease, these short poems which baffled, fascinated and challenged so many scholars who in the course of time have tried so hard to decipher Yuan's thoughts, so masterly expressed.
The Bibliography is a treasury of information in itself.
Eugen Feifel, Monumenta Serica: 35 (1981-83), pp. 631-635

Professor Wixted's work is now a very fine book. Of all the difficult kinds of texts in classical Chinese letters, perhaps poems on poetry are the most difficult to understand--because of their terse, dense, elliptical and highly allusive mode of discourse....The exact meanings of the terms of this vocabulary are often extremely difficult to determine since they seem to vary so much over time and from writer to writer. In dealing with such terms one has to keep in mind a series of overlapping contexts: (1) the individual critic's own body of writings, (2) the values and views of the group or 'school' to which he might belong, (3) his historical period and stage in the overall development of creative and critical writing, (4) the broader context of current intellectual discourse including philosophical and religious writings, and (5) the tradition of criticism up to his own time. It is very much to Wixted's credit that he is well aware of these contexts and how they interrelate and that he is able to draw upon this awareness to help explicate Yuan's poems.
[T]he advantages of the [book's] arrangement are significant: the reader has at his fingertips a self-contained package of materials--poetry as well as prose, including Chinese texts--by Yuan and others that supplies virtually everything needed to gain a thorough appreciation of what Yuan's 'Thirty Poems on Poetry' say and mean.
Richard John Lynn, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47.2 (Dec. 1987), pp. 696-715

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