The How to Read Chinese Literature series

[Guest realmayo]

I bought some new books recently and don't think most of them have been mentioned here. They make up what's now called the 'How to Read Chinese Literature' series, either written or edited by Zong-qi Cai.

 

How to Read Chinese Poetry (2008): Goes through each poetry era/style with lots of translated poems. A decent survey of Chinese classical poetry, whether you can read Chinese or not. Mentioned previously on these forums.

How to Read Chinese Poetry Workbook (2012) A companion to the first book but for people who are learning to read Chinese poetry, so pinyin, vocabulary and modern Chinese translations accompany a new set of 100 Classical poems and their English translations.

How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context (2018) Essays, all in English, on poetry from antiquity to the Tang. If you study western literature in the west you'd expect to read stuff like this.

 

How to Read Chinese Prose (2022) Lots of classical Chinese prose pieces translated into English and then discussed, for what they mean, why they're so good etc. Don't need to be able to read Chinese.

How to Read Chinese Prose in Chinese (2022) This is a kind of companion, for people studying Classical Chinese: more texts (and some that overlap), but this time the original Chinese text is the focus, with vocab and grammar notes as well as translations into modern Chinese and English.

 

How to Read Chinese Drama (2022) Don't have this but seems to be an introduction/appreciation and anthology to Chinese drama, no Chinese required.

 

Of these six books, three are subtitled "A Guided Anthology": How to Read Chinese Poetry, How to Read Chinese Prose, and How to Read Chinese Drama.

I would say that How to Read Chinese Poetry Workbook and How to Read Chinese Prose in Chinese are the companions to the anthologies, for people who know some of, or are studying, the Classical language.

That leaves How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context, which seems to be more designed to give you a thorough and almost more academic grounding in Chinese poetry and poetics.

 

 

Early days cos I only bought most of these recently but I'm really happy to find so much material in English that's designed to give a real understanding of Chinese literature (rather than simply saying this is a famous poem and this is what it means). The two prose books in particular are a revelation!

 

More details here: http://cup.columbia.edu/series/how-to-read-chinese-literature. And amazon lets you 'look inside' so see a preview.

 

[feihong]

Related, I recently found this book: 唐诗百话, although I haven’t read much of it yet. It’s a selection of 100 Tang poems, with explanations in plain (Chinese) language.

 

On 5/18/2022 at 1:53 PM, realmayo said:

How to Read Chinese Poetry Workbook (2012) A companion to the first book but for people who are learning to read Chinese poetry, so pinyin, vocabulary and modern Chinese translations accompany a new set of 100 Classical poems and their English translations.

Is this workbook a good standalone resource, or does it rely heavily on How to Read Chinese Poetry?

[Guest realmayo]

It's a decent standalone resource: lots of poems, no in-depth context but still some brief comments on each.

[Luxi]

A good book series indeed!

You might be interested to know Prof. Zong-qi Cai has organised a free podcast on How to Read Chinese poetry based on the poetry set. It's in English and the poems are recited in English and Mandarin. It started in February and is now on episode 16 (War as a Theme in Early Popular Chinese Poetry). there is a dedicated website with the details and downloadable pdfs here  :

How to Read Chinese Poetry  

and there's even a Chinese Poetry Podcast Facebook group  

The podcasts can be found on Spotify, Ximalaya, Apple, Google and don't know how many more platforms.

I'm already behind with the schedule but the podcasts I listened to were very helpful to internalize what I had read in the book.