Maghiel van Crevel – författare

Chinese Poetry and Translation: Rights and Wrongs' offers fifteen essays on the triptych of poetry + translation + Chinese. The collection has three parts: The Translator's Take, Theoretics, and Impact. The conversation stretches from queer-feminist engagement with China's newest poetry to philosophical and philological reflections on its oldest, and from Tang- and Song-dynasty classical poetry in Western languages to Baudelaire and Celan in Chinese. Translation is taken as an interlingual and intercultural act, and the essays foreground theoretical expositions and the practice of translation in equal but not opposite measure. Poetry has a transforming yet ever-acute relevance in Chinese culture, and this makes it a good entry point for studying Chinese-foreign encounters. Pushing past oppositions that still too often restrict discussions of translation-form versus content, elegance versus accuracy, and the original versus the translated - this volume brings a wealth of new thinking to the interrelationships between poetry, translation, and China. Stretching from queer-feminist engagement with China’s newest poetry to philological reflection on its oldest, this book brings a wealth of new thinking to the interrelationships between poetry, translation, and China.

Three hundred million Chinese have left the countryside for the cities since the 1980s, in a flood wave of labor migration that has fueled China’s rise. Known as ‘battlers,’ they belong to a new underclass who face exploitation, discrimination, and harrowing insecurity. And they write poetry.Battler poetry speaks of being ground down in the factory workshop, of being forced into sex work, of being robbed of your youth. It has made its way into mass media and labor activism, and developed uneasy relations with the literary establishment. It aligns with writing elsewhere in the world that shows the power of poetry as an expression of sociopolitical identity.Who are China’s battler poets? Where do they find the time and energy, after a 12-hour shift on the assembly line or on a moped in big-city traffic? What is their poetry like? Who reads it? What happens when it travels abroad? How has the Chinese state responded? What can battler poetry tell us about the nexus of aesthetics and social experience, in a world where inequality reigns?China’s Battler Poetry tells the gripping story of an ‘unlikely’ genre. Building on textual and cultural analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, and the collection of underground source material, it sits at the interface of the humanities and social science. It is driven by a desire to understand poetry as both art and social practice, looking at its words through the lifeworlds of its authors and the other way around.

Wilt Idema is one of the world's leading scholars and translators of Chinese literature, with research interests ranging from classical poetry to premodern fiction, performance literature and women's writing. His oeuvre is exceptional in its inclusiveness and its ability to let different historical periods, genres and issues speak to one another, and to make the riches of Chinese literature accessible to a wide range of readers. In honor of his work, this collection brings together new research by twenty-two prominent scholars in a field of tremendous scope and diversity, on topics including genre characteristics, literary representations of social and political history, gender and cultural identity, music, autobiography, women's writing, internet literature and more.

Chinese Poetry in Times of Mind, Mayhem and Money is a groundbreaking contribution to scholarship, well-suited to classroom use in that it combines rigorous analysis with a lively style. Covering the period from the 1980s to the present, it is organized around the notions of text, context and metatext, meaning poetry, its socio-political and cultural surroundings, and critical discourse in the broadest sense. Authors and issues studied include Han Dong, Haizi, Xi Chuan, Yu Jian, Sun Wenbo, Yang Lian, Wang Jiaxin, Bei Dao, Yin Lichuan, Shen Haobo and Yan Jun, and everything from the subtleties of poetic rhythm to exile-bashing in domestic media. This book has room for all that poetry is: cultural heritage, symbolic capital, intellectual endeavor, social commentary, emotional expression, music and the materiality of language – art, in a word.

Paint Feet on a Snake is intended for Chinese Studies majors, China-focused students in other fields, heritage learners, and professionals. It will help improve vocabulary and grammar competence, and foster reading strategies and writing and translation skills, for use in academic and professional settings. Available in full-form and simplified character editions. Aimed at learners of Mandarin with a command of about 850 characters and 1200 vocabulary items. Suitable for language acquisition programs and for programs combining linguistic and cultural competence. Optimized in pilot editions at Leiden University.

Paint Feet on a Snake is intended for Chinese Studies majors, China-focused students in other fields, heritage learners, and professionals. It will help improve vocabulary and grammar competence, and foster reading strategies and writing and translation skills, for use in academic and professional settings. Available in full-form and simplified character editions Aimed at learners of Mandarin with a command of about 850 characters and 1200 vocabulary items Suitable for language acquisition programs and for programs combining linguistic and cultural competence Optimized in pilot editions at Leiden University.

Stretching from queer-feminist engagement with China’s newest poetry to philological reflection on its oldest, this book brings a wealth of new thinking to the interrelationships between poetry, translation, and China.