Named for the famous Chinese minister of state, Guan Zhong (d. 645 B.C.), the Guanzi is one of the largest collections of ancient Chinese writings still in existence. With this volume, W. Allyn Rickett completes the first full translation of the Guanzi into English. This represents a truly monumental effort, as the Guanzi is a long and notoriously difficult work. It was compiled in its present form about 26 B.C. by the Han dynasty scholar Liu Xiang and the surviving text consists of some seventy-six anonymous essays dating from the fifth century B.C. to the first...

These essays, by Chinese and Western scholars, treat selected aspects of Chinese literary theory, history, and criticism from the age of Confucius to the beginning of the twentieth-century.

The topics examined include Confucius as a literary critic (Donald Holzman); the view of ch'i, or vital force, as a decisive element in creative writing (David Pollard); the literary theories of the eleventh-century poet and essayist Ou-yang Hsiu (Yu-shih Chen) and his contemporary Huang T'ing-chien (Adele Rickett); and the seventeenth-century philosopher-poet Wang Fu-chih (Siu-kit Wong)....

These essays, by Chinese and Western scholars, treat selected aspects of Chinese literary theory, history, and criticism from the age of Confucius to the beginning of the twentieth-century.

The topics examined include Confucius as a literary critic (Donald Holzman); the view of ch'i, or vital force, as a decisive element in creative writing (David Pollard); the literary theories of the eleventh-century poet and essayist Ou-yang Hsiu (Yu-shih Chen) and his contemporary Huang T'ing-chien (Adele Rickett); and the seventeenth-century philosopher-poet Wang Fu-chih (Siu-kit Wong)....