How to Read Chinese Poetry

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).

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

• Thematic Contents A Note on How to Use This Anthology Acknowledgments Major Chinese Dynasties List of Symbols Introduction: Major Aspects of Chinese Poetry Zong-qi Cai Part 1 Pre-Qin Times 1. Tetrasyllabic Shi Poetry: The Book of Poetry (Shijing) William H. Nienhauser 2. Sao Poetry: The Lyrics of Chu (Chuci) Fusheng Wu Part 2 The Han Dynasty 3. Fu Poetry: An Ancient-Style Rhapsody (Gufu) David R. Knechtges 4. Shi Poetry: Music Bureau Poems (Yuefu) Jui-lung Su 5. Pentasyllabic Shi Poetry: The "Nineteen Old Poems" Zong-qi Cai Part 3 The Six Dynasties 6. Pentasyllabic Shi Poetry: Landscape and Farmstead Poems Wendy Swartz 7. Pentasyllabic Shi Poetry: New Topics Xiaofei Tian Part 4 The Tang Dynasty 8. Recent-Style Shi Poetry: Pentasyllabic Regulated Verse (Wuyan Lushi) Zong-qi Cai 9. Recent-Style Shi Poetry: Heptasyllabic Regulated Verse (Qiyan Lushi) Robert Ashmore 10. Recent-Style Shi Poetry: Quatrains (Jueju) Charles Egan 11. Ancient-Style Shi Poetry: A Revival Paula Varsano Part 5 The Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty 12. Ci Poetry: Short Song Lyrics (Xiaoling) Maija Bell Samei 13. Ci Poetry: Long Song Lyrics (Manci) Xinda Lian 14. Ci Poetry: Long Song Lyrics on Objects (Yongwu Ci) Shuen-fu Lin 15. Shi Poetry: Ancient and Recent Styles Ronald Egan Part 6 The Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties 16. Qu Poetry: Song Poems (Sanqu) of the Yuan Dynasty Xinda Lian 17. Shi Poetry of the Ming and Qing Dynasties Grace S. Fong 18. A Synthesis: Rhythm, Syntax, and Vision of Chinese Poetry Zong-qi Cai Phonetic Transcriptions of Entering-Tone Characters Abbreviations of Primary Texts Contributors Glossary-Index