Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Asian - Chinese

Widely recognized as modern China's preeminent man of letters, Lu Xun (1881-1936) is revered as the voice of a nation's conscience, a writer comparable to Shakespeare and Tolstoy in stature and influence. Gloria Davies's portrait now gives readers a better sense of this influential author by situating the man Mao Zedong hailed as "the sage of modern China" in his turbulent time and place.

In Davies's vivid rendering, we encounter a writer passionately engaged with the heady arguments and intrigues of a country on the eve of revolution. She traces political tensions in Lu Xun's works...

What drives literary change? Does literature merely follow shifts in a culture, or does it play a distinctive role in shaping emergent trends? Michael Fuller explores these questions while examining the changes in Chinese "shi" poetry from the late Northern Song dynasty (960 1127) to the end of the Southern Song (1127 1279), a period of profound social and cultural transformation.

"Shi" poetry written in response to events was the dominant literary genre in Song dynasty China, serving as a central form through which literati explored meaning in their encounters with the world. By the...

The half-dozen generations from 100 B.C. to A.D. 100 were epoch-making in Chinese history, and there is a real need for "vignetting sketches of manner, character, and thought" based on documents identifiable as to date and authorship. Fortunately such documents are available in the fu (Chinese literary form) on the Two Capitals by Pan Ku and Chang Heng. Insights into Han life and beliefs are offered through the translation and paraphrase of the fu, with extensive critique and commentary.

Originally published in 1960.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest...

As state control of private life in China has loosened since 1980, citizens have experienced an unprecedented family revolution--an overhaul of family structure, marital practices, and gender relationships. While the nuclear family has become a privileged realm of romance and individualism symbolizing the post-revolutionary "freedoms" of economic and affective autonomy, women's roles in particular have been transformed, with the ideal "iron girl" of socialism replaced by the feminine, family-oriented "good wife and wise mother."

Problems and contradictions in this new domestic...