Reviews for Changing Stories in the Chinese World

The average rating for Changing Stories in the Chinese World based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-09-05 00:00:00 Jerrell Schermerhorn This is how you present translated poetry. Excellent. This volume reproduces an album with the poems and imaginary portraits of the great women writers that flourished in the imperial court of Japan from the ninth to thirteenth centuries. For every poem (yes, every single one) there is not only a translation, with extensive notes explaining the meaning(s) and symbolism, but also a phonetic text showing how it sounded, notes on the author's autobiography with emphasis on elements that related* to the poem, and translations of the poems to which the poet was responding or was influenced by. It is all presented in such a way as to be accessible to non-experts. There is minimal technical terminology and where something like a custom or item of apparel is significant, it is explained. *Often the poems were noted at the time as being written for specific people, such as "X wrote this in response to Y's poem asking if her feelings had changed." Others were written for less personal reasons, such as poetry competition with a set theme.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-08-22 00:00:00 Peter Rontogiannis An interesting book, I wish it had more poetry. Sometimes the descriptions felt like the guy was dragging them out when he was talking about the calligraphy because that's not why I was reading the book. The calligraphy isn't even by the women who wrote the poetry, just some random kids. Who cares? Anyway, loved reading up on more female poets of like the 9th-13th century. Great stuff there.