In this first serious study of Hanshan ("Cold Mountain"), Paul Rouzer discusses some seventy poems of the iconic Chinese poet who lived sometime during the Tang dynasty (618-907). Hanshan's poems gained a large readership in English-speaking countries following the publication of Jack Kerouac's novel The Dharma Bums (1958) and Gary Snyder's translations (which began to appear that same year), and they have been translated into English more than any other body of Chinese verse.

Rouzer investigates how Buddhism defined the way that believers may have read Hanshan in premodern times. He proposes a Buddhist poetics as a counter-model to the Confucian assumptions of Chinese literary thought and examines how texts by Kerouac, Snyder, and Jane Hirshfield respond to the East Asian Buddhist tradition.

A refreshing look at a text that has been known as a sort of 'Buddhist Poetry' in East Asia for centuries but has only recently been seen anew via its unexpectedly large readership in the now-cosmopolitan Chan/Zen world. Rouzer reexamines what is Buddhist, and what is poetic, about the Cold Mountain poems with intriguing insights and close reading. -- Gary Snyder, author of Danger on Peaks: Poems A well-documented analysis and distinctive interpretation of the Buddhist implications of the ever intriguing poetry attributed to a figure known as Hanshan. -- Steven Heine, author of Zen Skin, Zen Marrow: Will the Real Zen Buddhism Please Stand Up? Brings the techniques of advanced literary interpretation to this corpus in a book that gives a broad readership close acquaintance with the details of language, style, and background. -- Haun Saussy, author of The Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic

About the Author

Paul Rouzer is professor of Asian languages and literatures at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese and Articulated Ladies: Gender and the Male Community in Early Chinese Texts.

Reviews

"It's a fascinating book that's a pleasure to read for both specialist and general readers."

-- Carla Nappi * New Books Network *

"Readers and writers of English and American literature can find some kind of enlightenment in On Cold Mountain's presentation of the processes of poetic transmission and Buddhist poetics in its earlier contexts."

-- Lucas Klein * Tang Studies *

"Paul Rouzer's new monograph is a welcome contribution to the field, a shaft of light illuminating the brillance of one jewel in a vast, neglected mine. . . . It is a pioneering work, an essential guide for anyone who would wish to make the journey across the strange landscape of Hanshan."

-- Thomas J. Mazanec * Journal of the American Oriental Society (JAOS) *

"In this first major study of Hanshan, Paul Rouzer adds new dimensions to our understanding of the poet and proposes inventive methodological directions in reading Hanshan from a Buddhist perspective and by formulating a study that is at once scholarly and popularly accessible."

-- Christopher Byrne * Journal of Chinese Religions *



Book Information
ISBN 9780295742687
Author Paul Rouzer
Format Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint University of Washington Press
Publisher University of Washington Press
Weight(grams) 363g