Reviews for The Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry

The average rating for The Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-09-21 00:00:00 Barry F. Puschauver An incredibly thought-provoking account of Chinese poetry (shī 詩, especially pentametric [wǔyán 五言] poetry) from the early medieval period, roughly 200-500 CE. Drawing mostly on the scholarship of Hans Frankel and Jean-Pierre Diény, Owen argues against a strong notion of "authorship" in poetry of this time. First, he calls into question the reliability of our sources for early poetry: most are culled from anthologies that altered the poems to make them more or less "literary." Next, he gives us a "grammar" of poetry from this time. This is by far Owen's strongest chapter. Poems were composed according to certain broad themes (travelling, feasting, sleeplessness, etc.), and followed the development of certain "topics" (putting on clothes, pacing, moonlight, breeze) in a set order. The author of such a poem was more like a "remixer," someone who took source material and shaped it to a specific purpose. In later chapters, Owen expands this argument in a number of directions, analyzing individual themes (such as "immortals" and "death and the feast") as well as the relationship of authorship to other things (such as the poetic speaker and the concept of imitation). The book concludes with seven - count 'em seven - appendices, which are essentially mini-essays on specific subjects (such as "Yuefu as a generic term") and expansions of other scholars' arguments. This book deserves to be very closely scrutinized, subjected to one scholar or another's microscope, since Owen makes such provocative claims. His method is to gesture toward mountains of evidence, then pick up one or two choice examples, discuss them for a few pages, then move on to another example. The danger is that this could fall into cherry-picking, since Owen is rarely systematic. I'm not saying he does this here, but it's hard to know since the material he commands is daunting in both its size and its difficulty. Stephen Owen is widely considered one of the top scholars of classical Chinese poetry in the West (and in all the world), and from this book one can see why: he makes strong, provocative arguments in well-written prose, featuring fluid translations of source material, drawing upon (but not enslaved to) previous scholarship. This carefully crafted work has set the horizons for future scholars.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-04-17 00:00:00 Brent S Adkins Good survey. Many summaries of important works requiring some background to appreciate. Interesting biographies. Origins of haiku and kabuki especially interesting to me.