Description
Book SynopsisThis is the first book-length study in English of
Wenxin diaolong by Liu Xie (ca. 465-521), arguably the most complex and comprehensive work of literary criticism in ancient China. For centuries it has intrigued and inspired Chinese literati, and modern English-speaking scholars have also found it an important source for the study of traditional Chinese poetics and aesthetics.
Trade Review"The book presents a complex weave of scholarship on a difficult and important medieval literary text."
The Journal of Asian StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction Zong-qi Cai Part I. Literary and Critical Traditions: 1. Liu Xie's idea of canonicity Kang-i Sun Chang 2. The making of a critical system: concepts of literature in Wenxin Diaolong and earlier texts Zong-qi Cai 3. Encoding the literary, decoding the text: shifting perspectives on the Wenxin Diaolong Maureen Robertson Part II. Intellectual Foundations: 4. Buddhism in The Literary Mind and Ornate Rhetoric Victor H. Mair 5. Wang Bi and Liu Xie's Wenxin Diaolong: terms and concepts, influence and affiliations Richard John Lynn Part III: 6. Poet, mind and world: a reconsideration of the 'Shen si' chapter of Wenxin Diaolong Ronald Egan 7. Liu Hsieh on imagination Shuen-fu Lin Part IV: 8. The bones of parallel rhetoric in Wenxin Diaolong Andrew H. Plaks 9. Liu Xie and the discourse machine Stephen Owen 10. Between 'literary mind' and 'carving dragons': order and excess in Wenxin Diaolong Wai-yee Li A survey of studies on Wenxin Diaolong in China and other parts of Asia Zhang Shaokang.
