This groundbreaking anthology, edited by the veteran scholar who founded the field of Korean literature in the West, offers a representative selection from the four major genres of native Korean poetry: the Silla songs known as hyangga, Koryo songs, sijo, and kasa. The performance of oral songs was central to the religious life of ancient Koreans, and their passion for song and poetry is as evident in these texts today as it was to the earliest Chinese observers. Therefore, in addition to such classics as the Songs of Flying Dragons, the great eulogy-cycle compiled from...
This groundbreaking anthology, edited by the veteran scholar who founded the field of Korean literature in the West, offers a representative selection...
Hanan has translated six of the twelve stories in the Sh'ier lou collection, which is the most famous individual collection of vernacular stories from premodern China. With Hanan's introduction and notes, and containing Li Yu's emphasis marks, notes, and critiques, this volume will interest students of Chinese literature and general readers alike.
Hanan has translated six of the twelve stories in the Sh'ier lou collection, which is the most famous individual collection of vernacular stori...
Two prominent translators present the first complete English-language edition of one of India's greatest works of classical literature: the Purananuru. This anthology of four hundred poems by more than 150 poets between the first and third centuries CE in old Tamil--the literary language of ancient Tamilnadu--was composed before Aryan influence had penetrated the south. It is thus a unique testament to pre-Aryan India. Beyond its importance for understanding the development of South Asia's history, culture, religion, and linguistics, the Purananuru is a great work of...
Two prominent translators present the first complete English-language edition of one of India's greatest works of classical literature: the Puranan...
Revolutionizing received opinion of Taoism's origins in light of historic new discoveries, Harold D. Roth has uncovered China's oldest mystical text--the original expression of Taoist philosophy--and presents it here with a complete translation and commentary. Over the past twenty-five years, documents recovered from the tombs of China's ancient elite have sparked a revolution in scholarship about early Chinese thought, in particular the origins of Taoist philosophy and religion. In Original Tao, Harold D. Roth exhumes the seminal text of Taoism--Inward Training...
Revolutionizing received opinion of Taoism's origins in light of historic new discoveries, Harold D. Roth has uncovered China's oldest mystical text--...
With its fresh translations by newer voices in the field, its broad scope, and its flowing style, this anthology places the immense riches of Chinese literature within easy reach. Ranging from the beginnings to 1919, this abridged version of The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature retains all the characteristics of the original. In putting together these selections Victor H. Mair interprets "literature" very broadly to include not just literary fiction, poetry, and drama, but folk and popular literature, lyrics and arias, elegies and rhapsodies, biographies,...
With its fresh translations by newer voices in the field, its broad scope, and its flowing style, this anthology places the immense riches of Chinese ...
Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725), often referred to as "Japan's Shakespeare" and a "god of writers," was arguably the most famous playwright in Japanese history and wrote more than 100 plays for the kabuki and bunraku theaters. Today, the plays of this major literary figure are performed on kabuki and bunraku stages as well as in the modern theater, and forty-nine films of his plays have been made, thirty-one of them from the silent era. Translations of Chikamatsu's plays are available, but we have few examples of his late work, in which he increasingly incorporated stylistic elements of...
Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725), often referred to as "Japan's Shakespeare" and a "god of writers," was arguably the most famous playwright in Japane...
Mistress & Maid, one of the greatest tragedies of Chinese drama, is here available for the first time in English. Acclaimed translator Cyril Birch presents the bittersweet tale of Bella, daughter of the Wang family, her maid Petal, and the young scholar Shen Chun. After her father reneges on her marital pact, Bella refuses to renounce her love for Shen, with whom she has vowed to share "in life one room, in death one tomb." The subversion of both conventional morality and the arranged marriage through vivid drama and witty comic scenes makes this seventeenth-century play particularly...
Mistress & Maid, one of the greatest tragedies of Chinese drama, is here available for the first time in English. Acclaimed translator Cyril B...
Since its first appearance in China in the third century CE, the Lotus Sutra has been the object of intense veneration among generations of Buddhists in China, Korea, and Japan, as well as other parts of the world. It is often considered the fundamental Mahayana Buddhist sutra, has attracted more commentary than any other Buddhist scripture, and has had a profound impact on the great works of Japanese and Chinese literature. No one can understand East Asia without some knowledge of its teachings. This abridged edition of Burton Watson's acclaimed translation contains this sutra's...
Since its first appearance in China in the third century CE, the Lotus Sutra has been the object of intense veneration among generations of Buddhists ...
Composed in the mid-sixteenth century, The Sound of the Kiss, or The Story That Must Never Be Told, could be considered the first novel written in South Asia. Telugu, the language spoken in today's Andhra Pradesh region of southern India, has a classical literary tradition extending over a thousand years. Suranna's masterpiece comes from a period of intense creativity in Telugu, when great poets produced strikingly modern innovations. The novel explodes preconceived ideas about early South Indian literature: for example, that the characters lack interiority, that the language is...
Composed in the mid-sixteenth century, The Sound of the Kiss, or The Story That Must Never Be Told, could be considered the first novel ...
Du Fu (712-777) has been called China's greatest poet, and some call him the greatest nonepic, nondramatic poet whose writings survive in any language. Du Fu excelled in a great variety of poetic forms, showing a richness of language ranging from elegant to colloquial, from allusive to direct. His impressive breadth of subject matter includes intimate personal detail as well as a great deal of historical information--which earned him the epithet "poet-historian." Some 1,400 of Du Fu's poems survive today, his fame resting on about one hundred that have been widely admired over the centuries....
Du Fu (712-777) has been called China's greatest poet, and some call him the greatest nonepic, nondramatic poet whose writings survive in any language...