A Little Primer of Tu Fu - Softcover

Hawkes, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9627255025 ISBN 13: 9789627255024

Publisher: Renditions Paperbacks, 1988

Synopsis

The standard introduction to the poetry of Tu Fu (712-770) regarded by many Chinese as their country's greatest poet. The thirty-five poems from the well-known Chinese anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems are each accompanied by a detailed and lively explication of form, historical background and meaning. At the same time, inclusion of Chinese characters, romanization, and both literal and prose translations offer the general reader or beginning language student the rare chance to savor the poet's art first hand.

About this title

About the Author

Tu Fu (712–770) lived during a time when the Tang Dynasty was wracked by war, mass dislocation, and starvation. A minor bureaucrat, a refugee, and a political exile, he wavered between the Confucian ideal of serving his country and the Taoist dream of a hermitage in nature. He lived both.
 
David Hawkes (1923–2009) was for many years a professor of Chinese and later a research fellow at Oxford University. His translations included the second-century anthology The Songs of the South and a magisterial multivolume version of Cao Xueqin’s eighteenth-century novel, The Story of the Stone (The Dream of the Red Chamber), considered by many to be the greatest translation into English of Chinese prose.

Review

"Every Anglophone reader interested in the working mechanics behind Chinese poetry will find these texts to be endless resources worth returning to again and again...Although aimed as being introductory in nature, both A Little Primer of Tu Fu and Chinese Poetic Writing nonetheless forefront the presentation of the poem in Chinese characters, clearly emphasizing the importance of the original language in fully understanding any poetry." —Rain Taxi

“Tu Fu is...the greatest non-epic, non-dramatic poet who has survived in any language.”—Kenneth Rexroth

Edition details

• Publisher: Renditions Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9627255025
• ISBN 13: 9789627255024
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 255