Heather James

Stephen Owen

Lee Patterson

Jerome W. Clinton

Francis Abiola Irele

Sarah Lawall

Indira Viswanathan Peterson

William G. Thalmann

An anthology of world literature, featuring poetry, prose, drama, and fiction, covering a period that ranges from the invention of writing to the early seventeenth century, with six longer works, including Sophocles' "Oedipus the King," Dante's "Inferno," and Shakespeare's "Hamlet."

The Norton Anthology of World Literature

"Over the centuries, early Chinese classical poetry became embedded in a chronological account with great cultural resonance and came to be transmitted in versions accepted as authoritative. But modern scholarship has questioned components of the account and cast doubt on the accuracy of received texts. The result has destabilized the study of early Chinese poetry. This study adopts a double approach to the poetry composed between the end of the first century B.C.E. and the third century C.E. First, it examines extant material from this period synchronically, as if it were not historically arranged, with some poems attached to authors and some not. By setting aside putative differences of author and genre, Stephen Owen argues, we can see that this was “one poetry,” created from a shared poetic repertoire and compositional practices. Second, it considers how the scholars of the late fifth and early sixth centuries selected this material and reshaped it to produce the standard account of classical poetry. As Owen shows, early poetry comes to us through reproduction—reproduction by those who knew the poem and transmitted it, by musicians who performed it, and by scribes and anthologists—all of whom changed texts to suit their needs."

The Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry

Martin Kern

In this volume, leading scholars of early Chinese literature offer new, multi-faceted research on the ancient anthology Lyrics of Chu (Chuci). Through meticulous textual analysis, richly annotated translations, and theoretical reflection, they challenge millennia-old assumptions about China’s arch-poet Qu Yuan (ca. 300 BCE), his authorship, and the composition of the lyrics attributed to him, above all the “Li sao” (Encountering Sorrow), ancient China’s grandest poem. Thoroughly original insights into the poetics and aesthetics of Chuci poetry reopen these resplendent lyrics to a fresh appraisal of their captivating qualities and their foundational significance for the Chinese literary tradition. Contributors are: Lucas Rambo Bender, Heng Du, Michael Hunter, Martin Kern, Paul W. Kroll, Stephen Owen.

New Approaches

Qu Yuan and the Chuci

James Bryant Conant University Professor Stephen Owen

Originally published to great acclaim by Yale University Press, this volume offers the full original text with the following features: Older Wade-Giles transliteration fully updated and revised to the current Pinyin standard, fully re-typeset and proofed for typographical errors and inconsistencies, and a new expanded Index.

The Poetry of the Early Tang

Hailed as the most important and most comprehensive single study of Tang poetry to have appeared in English when originally published by Yale University Press in 1981, this Quirin Press Revised Edition brings back into print this much sought after title and offers the full original text with the following features: Older Wade-Giles transliteration fully updated and revised to the current Pinyin standard; Fully re-typeset and proofed for typographical errors and inconsistencies. New expanded index including Chinese characters; Also available in a fully searchable E-book format including Chinese unicode characters ISBN: 978-1-922169-07-5 (pdf) Following Owen's analysis in "The Poetry of Early Tang" (also available from Quirin Press) of poetry as an art of social gesture and occasion this title explores the poetry of the High Tang which has often been referred to as "apogee of all Chinese poetry." Rather than merely defining the poetic art of eighth century China through Wang Wei, Li Bai, and Du Fu, Owen delves into the norms of the age to become acquainted with the symbiotic relationship that existed both between the major and lesser talents of the age, and the overall literary tradition. In these pages the poetry of the High Tang comes to life as a self-conscious art form, which, combined with a rekindling of China's poetic past, lead to a more personal mode of expression and individual voice that culminated in the unprecedented and dazzling efflorescence of the art. Extracts available on www.quirinpress.com Keywords: Chinese Poetry - Tang Dynasty 618-907 - Poetics - History & Criticism. Owen's companion volume on the Early Tang is also available from Quirin Press ISBN: 978-1-922169-02-0 (paperback) ISBN: 978-1-922169-03-7 (pdf). For further information and extracts visit www.quirinpress.com

The High Tang

The Great Age of Chinese Poetry

This study of poetry composed between the end of the first century B.C.E. and the third century C.E. examines extant material synchronically, as if it were not historically arranged. It also considers how scholars of the late fifth and early sixth centuries selected this material and reshaped it to produce the standard account of classical poetry.

Om poesi og anden kinesisk litteratur fra midten af Tang-dynastiet (618-906)

Essays in Mid-Tang Literary Culture

The End of the Chinese 'Middle Ages'

Poetry and the Labyrinth of Desire

Mi-Lou

Planning Settlements Naturally

Shuen-fu Lin

This volume presents twelve essays on the evolution of shih poetry from the second to the tenth century, the period that began with the sudden flowering of shih poetry in live-character meter and culminated in the T'ang, the golden age of classical Chinese poetry. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Shih Poetry from the Late Han to the T'ang

The Vitality of the Lyric Voice

In this continuation of the literary history of the Tang, Stephen Owen analyzes the redirection of poetry that followed the deaths of the major poets of the High and Mid-Tang and the rejection of their poetic styles. Poets had always drawn on past poetry, but in the Late Tang, the poetic past was beginning to assume the form it would have for the next millennium; it was becoming a repertoire of styles, genres, and the voices of past poets--a repertoire that would endure.

Chinese Poetry of the Mid-Ninth Century (827-860)

The Late Tang

In this dual-language compilation of seven complete major works and many shorter pieces from the Confucian period through the Ch'ing dynasty, Stephen Owen provides fundamental texts in the history of Chinese thought on literature and comments on them extensively. Canonical early statements, prefaces, poems on poetry treatises, short essays, letters, technical manuals - all are represented and placed in their historical and cultural context. Besides discussing individual selections in detail, Owen traces the development of motifs, methods of argumentation, and deep concerns in Chinese literary thought and explains how they diverge from Western literary theory. This beautifully designed volume will be indispensable to students of Chinese literature, while its translations and commentaries will open up Chinese literary thought to theorists and scholars of other languages.

Readings in Chinese Literary Thought

Under the Song Dynasty, China experienced rapid commercial growth and monetization of the economy. In the same period, the austere ethical turn that led to neo-Confucianism was becoming increasingly prevalent in the imperial bureaucracy and literati culture. Tracing the influences of these trends in Chinese intellectual history, All Mine! explores the varied ways in which eleventh-century writers worked through the conflicting values of this new world. Stephen Owen contends that in the new money economy of the Song, writers became preoccupied with the question of whether material things can bring happiness. Key thinkers returned to this problem, weighing the conflicting influences of worldly possessions and material comfort against Confucian ideology, which locates true contentment in the Way and disdains attachment to things. In a series of essays, Owen examines the works of writers such as the prose master Ouyang Xiu, who asked whether tranquility could be found in the backwater to which he had been exiled; the poet and essayist Su Dongpo, who was put on trial for slandering the emperor; and the historian Sima Guang, whose private garden elicited reflections on private ownership. Through strikingly original readings of major eleventh-century figures, All Mine! inquires not only into the material conditions of happiness but also the broader conditions of knowledge.

Happiness, Ownership, and Naming in Eleventh-Century China

All Mine!

Kang-i Sun Chang

Stephen Owen is James Bryant Conant Professor of Chinese at Harvard University. --Book Jacket.

The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature

A compendium of traditional Chinese literature offers a broad variety of genres including poetry, letters, stories, excerpts from novels and drama, philosophical writings, jokes, and other prose forms.

Beginnings to 1911

An Anthology of Chinese Literature

This dual-language compilation of seven complete major works and many shorter pieces from the Confucian period through the Ch'ing dynasty will be indispensable to students of Chinese literature. Owen's masterful translations and commentaries have opened up Chinese literary thought to theorists and scholars of other languages.

This dual-language compilation of seven complete major works and many shorter pieces from the Confucian period through the Ch’ing dynasty will be indispensable to students of Chinese literature. Stephen Owen’s masterful translations and commentaries have opened up Chinese literary thought to theorists and scholars of other languages.

The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature: From 1375

"“Song Lyric,” ci, remains one of the most loved forms of Chinese poetry. From the early eleventh century through the first quarter of the twelfth century, song lyric evolved from an impromptu contribution in a performance practice to a full literary genre, in which the text might be read more often than performed. Young women singers, either indentured or private entrepreneurs, were at the heart of song practice throughout the period; the authors of the lyrics were notionally mostly male. A strange gender dynamic arose, in which men often wrote in the voice of a woman and her imagined feelings, then appropriated that sensibility for themselves.As an essential part of becoming literature, a history was constructed for the new genre. At the same time the genre claimed a new set of aesthetic values to radically distinguish it from older “Classical Poetry,” shi. In a world that was either pragmatic or moralizing (or both), song lyric was a discourse of sensibility, which literally gave a beautiful voice to everything that seemed increasingly to be disappearing in the new Song dynasty world of righteousness and public advancement."

Stephen Owen

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