In this "guided" anthology, experts lead students through the major genres and eras of Chinese poetry from antiquity to the modern time. The volume is divided into 6 chronological sections and features more than 140 examples of the best shi, sao, fu, ci, and qu poems. A comprehensive introduction and extensive thematic table of contents highlight the thematic, formal, and prosodic features of Chinese poetry, and each chapter is written by a scholar who specializes in a particular period or genre. Poems are presented in Chinese and English and are accompanied by a tone-marked romanized version, an explanation of Chinese linguistic and poetic conventions, and recommended reading strategies. Sound recordings of the poems are available online free of charge. These unique features facilitate an intense engagement with Chinese poetical texts and help the reader derive aesthetic pleasure and insight from these works as one could from the original. The companion volume How to Read Chinese Poetry Workbook presents 100 famous poems (56 are new selections) in Chinese, English, and romanization, accompanied by prose translation, textual notes, commentaries, and recordings. Contributors: Robert Ashmore (Univ. of California, Berkeley); Zong-qi Cai; Charles Egan (San Francisco State); Ronald Egan (Univ. of California, Santa Barbara); Grace Fong (McGill); David R. Knechtges (Univ. of Washington); Xinda Lian (Denison); Shuen-fu Lin (Univ. of Michigan); William H. Nienhauser Jr. (Univ. of Wisconsin); Maija Bell Samei; Jui-lung Su (National Univ. of Singapore); Wendy Swartz (Columbia); Xiaofei Tian (Harvard); Paula Varsano (Univ. of California, Berkeley); Fusheng Wu (Univ. of Utah)

This valuable guidebook offers multiple routes toward understanding the vast and varied traditions and practices of classical Chinese poetry, from its beginnings through the Qing dynasty. Close readings of individual poems-including the 'chestnuts' we all love to teach-are grounded in useful discussions of literary-historical and cultural contexts. A cross-cutting discussion of themes suggests ways in which the poems can speak to each other across boundaries of genre and dynasty. And the unusually extensive attention paid to the sound and prosody of Chinese poetry will be especially welcome to student and scholar alike. -- Pauline Yu, president of the American Council of Learned Societies

About the Author
Zong-qi Cai is professor of Chinese and comparative literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of The Matrix of Lyric Transformation: Poetic Modes and Self-Presentation in Early Chinese Pentasyllabic Poetry (Michigan, 1996) and Configurations of Comparative Poetics: Three Perspectives on Western and Chinese Literary Criticism (Hawai'i, 2002), and is the editor of A Chinese Literary Mind: Culture, Creativity, and Rhetoric in Wenxin dialong (Stanford, 2001) and Chinese Aesthetics: The Ordering of Literature, the Arts, and the Universe in the Six Dynasties (Hawai'i, 2004).

Reviews
By presenting poems in so many different forms: Chinese characters, Romanization, English translation, audio files, stress maps, and transliteration, the book enables the reader - no matter what her background in Chinese language, to grasp much of what is going on. BLT Not Just a Sandwich



Book Information
ISBN 9780231139410
Author Zong-qi Cai
Format Paperback
Page Count 456
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press