Description
This book offers a guided introduction to Chinese nonfictional prose and its literary and cultural significance. It features more than one hundred major texts from antiquity through the Qing dynasty that exemplify major genres, styles, and forms of traditional Chinese prose. For each work, the book presents an English translation, the Chinese original, and accessible critical commentary by leading scholars.
How to Read Chinese Prose teaches readers to appreciate the literary merits, stylistic devices, rhetorical choices, and argumentative techniques of a wide range of nonfictional writing. It emphasizes the interconnections among individual texts and across eras, helping readers understand the development of the literary tradition and what makes particular texts formative or distinctive within it. Organized by dynastic period and genre, the book identifies and examines four broad categories of prose-narrative, expository, descriptive, and communicative.
How to Read Chinese Prose is suitable for a range of courses in Chinese literature, history, religion, and philosophy, as well as for scholars and interested readers seeking to deepen their knowledge of the Chinese prose tradition. A companion book, How to Read Chinese Prose in Chinese, is designed for Chinese-language learners and features many of the same texts.
About the Author
Zong-qi Cai is professor of Chinese and comparative literature at Lingnan University of Hong Kong and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the general editor of the How to Read Chinese Literature series and the editor or coauthor of previous volumes in the series, most recently How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context: Poetic Culture from Antiquity Through the Tang (2018).
Reviews
Professor Zongqi Cai and an all-star team have made a major contribution to the field of classical Chinese prose by creating the preeminent reader. The book, with its comprehensive coverage of periods, styles, and authors, and a lucid interpretation of textual meanings and linguistic structures, will be immensely useful to learners of not only Chinese prose but also Chinese humanities, from literature to history and thought. -- David Wang, author of The Lyrical in Epic Time: Modern Chinese Intellectuals and Artists through the 1949 Crisis
This book is a treasure! Not only students of classical Chinese but also established scholars will gain new insights into the evolution of Chinese prose styles by letting leading experts guide them through key texts in the tradition. -- Patricia Ebrey, author of Emperor Huizong
The unusual depth and breadth of this collection is a major boon, as is the new and very useful organization of Chinese prose genres into the four forms of narrative, descriptive, discursive and communicative. This impressive work will be essential for Chinese literature professors and graduate students. -- Carrie (Reed) Wiebe, Middlebury College
An innovative and wide-ranging selection of prose works, translated and interpreted by experts. The texts will give readers a solid foundation and serve as a springboard for future exploration. The division into four generic categories-narrative, discursive, descriptive, and communicative-is a brilliant editorial decision. -- Keith McMahon, author of Celestial Women: Imperial Wives and Concubines in China, Song to Qing
Cai Zong-qi's newest addition to his encyclopedic "How To" series surprises and instructs, convening the field's most respected scholars to lead students, and all lovers of literature, beneath the surface of translation, teaching them to discern the richly recondite poetics that shape traditional Chinese prose writing. -- Paula Varsano, author of Tracking the Banished Immortal: The Poetry of Li Bo and its Critical Reception
Book Information
ISBN 9780231203654
Author Zong-qi Cai
Format Paperback
Page Count 440
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press
How to Read Chinese Prose teaches readers to appreciate the literary merits, stylistic devices, rhetorical choices, and argumentative techniques of a wide range of nonfictional writing. It emphasizes the interconnections among individual texts and across eras, helping readers understand the development of the literary tradition and what makes particular texts formative or distinctive within it. Organized by dynastic period and genre, the book identifies and examines four broad categories of prose-narrative, expository, descriptive, and communicative.
How to Read Chinese Prose is suitable for a range of courses in Chinese literature, history, religion, and philosophy, as well as for scholars and interested readers seeking to deepen their knowledge of the Chinese prose tradition. A companion book, How to Read Chinese Prose in Chinese, is designed for Chinese-language learners and features many of the same texts.
About the Author
Zong-qi Cai is professor of Chinese and comparative literature at Lingnan University of Hong Kong and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the general editor of the How to Read Chinese Literature series and the editor or coauthor of previous volumes in the series, most recently How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context: Poetic Culture from Antiquity Through the Tang (2018).
Reviews
Professor Zongqi Cai and an all-star team have made a major contribution to the field of classical Chinese prose by creating the preeminent reader. The book, with its comprehensive coverage of periods, styles, and authors, and a lucid interpretation of textual meanings and linguistic structures, will be immensely useful to learners of not only Chinese prose but also Chinese humanities, from literature to history and thought. -- David Wang, author of The Lyrical in Epic Time: Modern Chinese Intellectuals and Artists through the 1949 Crisis
This book is a treasure! Not only students of classical Chinese but also established scholars will gain new insights into the evolution of Chinese prose styles by letting leading experts guide them through key texts in the tradition. -- Patricia Ebrey, author of Emperor Huizong
The unusual depth and breadth of this collection is a major boon, as is the new and very useful organization of Chinese prose genres into the four forms of narrative, descriptive, discursive and communicative. This impressive work will be essential for Chinese literature professors and graduate students. -- Carrie (Reed) Wiebe, Middlebury College
An innovative and wide-ranging selection of prose works, translated and interpreted by experts. The texts will give readers a solid foundation and serve as a springboard for future exploration. The division into four generic categories-narrative, discursive, descriptive, and communicative-is a brilliant editorial decision. -- Keith McMahon, author of Celestial Women: Imperial Wives and Concubines in China, Song to Qing
Cai Zong-qi's newest addition to his encyclopedic "How To" series surprises and instructs, convening the field's most respected scholars to lead students, and all lovers of literature, beneath the surface of translation, teaching them to discern the richly recondite poetics that shape traditional Chinese prose writing. -- Paula Varsano, author of Tracking the Banished Immortal: The Poetry of Li Bo and its Critical Reception
Book Information
ISBN 9780231203654
Author Zong-qi Cai
Format Paperback
Page Count 440
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press
