A Little Primer of Tu Fu

Hawkes, David

ISBN 10: 9627255025 / ISBN 13: 9789627255024

Published by Renditions Paperbacks, 1988

About this Item

Fairly worn, but readable and intact. If applicable: Dust jacket, disc or access code may not be included.

Seller Inventory # GICWV.9627255025.A

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Little Primer of Tu Fu
• Publisher: Renditions Paperbacks
• Publication Date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9627255025
• ISBN 13: 9789627255024
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: acceptable

About this title

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 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.