The Chinese Literary Canon - Hardcover

In The Chinese Literary Canon, one of China's most brilliant critics puts three millennia of Chinese writing in its proper historical context. He shows us what to read and how to read it. Yu Qiuyu traces a bright line of the very best literature that China has produced: from the first carvings on bone, through the first poems, the first philosophers, the greatest historian, to the ultimate stylists of the Tang Dynasty and beyond. And because brilliant literature is always a product of its time and place, Yu tells us about the men who did the writing and the worlds in which they lived. Most of all, Yu tells us about the ideas that motivated them, how they read the writers of the past, and how each writer of genius transformed and added his own stamp to the literary canon. The Yellow Emperor, the Book of Poetry, Confucius and Laozi, the great historian Sima Qian, Cao Cao, Kum?raj?va, Li Bai, Du Fu, Cao Xueqin... Their thread weaves in and out of the history of the first Chinese, the Warring States, the unification under Qin, the destructive split into the Three Kingdoms, and the cosmopolitan Tang Dynasty. All of this history is interpreted and presented in the warm, distinctive voice of a truly great reader, Yu Qiuyu.

In The Chinese Literary Canon, one of China’s most brilliant critics puts three millennia of Chinese writing in its proper historical context. Yu Qiuyu traces a bright line through the very best literature that China has produced—from the oracle bones, through the first poems, the first philosophers, the great historians, to the ultimate stylists of the Tang Dynasty and into 20th century.Yu introduces his readers to the individuals who transformed the canon—The Yellow Emperor, the Book of Poetry, Confucius and Laozi, the great historian Sima Qian, Cao Cao, Kumarajiva, Li Bai, Du Fu, and Cao Xueqin— and the worlds in which they lived, explaining their motivations and the evolution of Chinese literary style. The Chinese Literary Canon weaves a thread in and out of the history, presented in the warm, distinctive voice of Yu Qiuyu.Born in 1946 in China’s Zhejiang province, YU QIUYU has become one of the most well-known Chinese writers of his time. After a successful academic career, Yu turned his focus toward Chinese culture and traveled across the Chinese mainland to visit the country’s national heritage sites and unlock the mysteries of China’s cultural and historical legacy. The ensuing publication, A Bittersweet Journey Through Culture, became a huge hit immediately following its first publication in 1992. His reflections on Chinese culture and his emotional writing style popularized a new literary style called the “meditative cultural essay” and a phenomenon termed “Yu Qiuyu culture.” Yu has since journeyed to the cradles of civilization around the world, and his travel notes and personal reflections of these civilizations have been collected in over a dozen publications. In 2004, he was selected by Beijing University and China Talent Editorial as one of the top ten artistic talents of China and the representative of Chinese culture. In 2005, he was the only Chinese scholar invited to attend UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Forum. In recent years, he has been invited to lecture on Chinese culture and world civilization at Harvard, Yale, and the Library of Congress among other prestigious institutions.