Reading Medieval Chinese Poetry : Text, Context, and Culture

Editor:
Paul W. Kroll

Publisher: 
Brill

Publication Year:
2014

Abstract:

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.

Table of Contents:

- Paul W. Kroll
Introduction

- Wendy Swartz 
Trading Literary Competence: Exchange Poetry in the Eastern Jin

- Robert Joe Cutter
Shen Who Couldn't Write: Literary Relationships at the Court of Liu Jun

- David R. Knechtges
Ruin and Remembrance in Classical Chinese Literature: The "Fu On The Ruined City" (蕪城賦) by Bao Zhao 鮑照

- Ding Xiang Warner
An Offering to the Prince: Wang Bo's Apology for Poetry

- Timothy Wai Keung Chan
Beyond Border and Boudoir: The Frontier in the Poetry of the Four Elites of Early Tang 

- Paul W. Kroll
Heyue yingling ji 河嶽英靈集 and the Attributes of High Tang Poetry

- Stephen Owen
Who Wrote That? Attribution in Northern Song Ci

- Ronald Egan
When There Is a Parallel Text in Prose: Reading Lu You's 陸游 1170 Yangzi River Journey in Poetry and Prose

- Pauline Yu
Judith Gautier and the Invention of Chinese Poetry