Modern Poetry in China

Modern Poetry in China PDF Author: Paul Manfredi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781604978629
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
This book is in the Cambria Sinophone World Series (general editor: Victor H. Mair). *Includes rare color images. Chinese poetry, along with many other art forms in China, underwent a highly self-conscious transformation in the first decades of the twentieth century. Poetry, perhaps more than any other art form, did so under the heavy burden of a voluminous literary precedent, a precedent which was in its very format of patterned words inscribed on scrolls--a mark of the Chinese literati tradition. Turning away from this tradition seemed necessary in the context of a political, social, and cultural reform movement (which was designed to strengthen China in the face of increasing international pressure as well as domestic breakdown). At the same time, reforming a poetic tradition which had served as a principal touchstone of aesthetic accomplishment--from its role in Confucian canon as object of contemplation for correct action, to its function as a test of candidate's qualifications to govern through the civil service examination, to its function as national past-time in all manner of social gathering--was a major challenge. The result of such a predicament for poets throughout the twentieth century has been the compulsion to discover a poetic style which resonates with the modern world and yet is rooted in Chinese cultural experience. One way in which poets have been able to accomplish this is by relying on poetry's visuality, be it in the graphic properties of the writing system itself, the visual context of the presentation of the poetic texts, or the acute image details in the poems. The history of approximately one century of modern Chinese poetry production has been addressed broadly in scholarship, but such broad strokes tend to miss important dynamics which fall outside of general narratives. The importance of Chinese visual tradition to modern Chinese poets is a good case in point. Accordingly, this book addresses specific manifestations of the nexus connecting modernity and visuality in Chinese poetry. It begins with a discussion of May Fourth poetics as exemplified in the groundbreaking work of Li Jinfa, China's first "Symbolist" poet. From there the book traces notable developments of visuality in the new form or free verse writing (called Xinshi or "New Poetry") through mid-century modernist experiments in Taiwan (focusing on Ji Xian). From there the book then explores the avant-garde poetry of Luo Qing and Xia Yu before returning to mainland Chinese developments of Misty poets Yan Li and his contemporaries. The work concludes with a wide variety of poet-artists writing and exhibiting in the twenty-first century. Looking across this period of modern Chinese poetry's development, one is able to observe how important the visual-verbal dynamic has been to the innovation of poetic style and method. From the twenty-first century on, such multi-media expressions will likely continue to grow; this is a function of a Chinese aesthetic tradition pairing word and image and will continue to manifest in new and more inventive ways. This is an important book for Asian literary and art history studies and history collections

Voices in Revolution

Voices in Revolution PDF Author: John A. Crespi
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824833651
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
China’s century of revolutionary change has been heard as much as seen, and nowhere is this more evident than in an auditory history of the modern Chinese poem. From Lu Xun’s seminal writings on literature to a recitation renaissance in urban centers today, poetics meets politics in the sounding voice of poetry. Supported throughout by vivid narration and accessible analysis, Voices in Revolution offers a literary history of modern China that makes the case for the importance of the auditory dimension of poetry in national, revolutionary, and postsocialist culture. Crespi brings the past to life by first examining the ideological changes to poetic voice during China’s early twentieth-century transition from empire to nation. He then traces the emergence of the spoken poem from the May Fourth period to the present, including its mobilization during the Anti-Japanese War, its incorporation into the student protest repertoire during China’s civil war, its role as a conflicted voice of Mao-era revolutionary passion, and finally its current adaptation to the cultural life of China’s party-guided market economy. Voices in Revolution alters the way we read by moving poems off the page and into the real time and space of literary activity. To all readers it offers an accessible yet conceptually fresh and often dramatic narration of China’s modern literary experience. Specialists will appreciate the book’s inclusion of noncanonical texts as well as its innovative interdisciplinary approach.

Recite and Refuse

Recite and Refuse PDF Author: Nick Admussen
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824856554
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Chinese prose poetry today is engaged with a series of questions that are fundamental to the modern Chinese language: What is prose? What is it good for? How should it look and sound? Millions of Chinese readers encounter prose poetry every year, both in the most official of state-sponsored magazines and in the unorthodox, experimental work of the avant-garde. Recite and Refuse makes the answers to our questions about prose legible by translating, surveying, and interpreting prose poems, and by studying the people, politics, and contexts that surround the writing of prose poetry. Author Nick Admussen argues that unlike most genres, Chinese prose poems lack a distinct size or shape. Their similarity to other prose is the result of a distinct process in which a prose form is recited with some kind of meaningful difference—an imitation that refuses to fully resemble its source. This makes prose poetry a protean, ever-changing group of works, channeling the language of science, journalism, Communist Party politics, advertisements, and much more. The poems look vastly different as products, but are made with a similar process. Focusing on the composition process allows Admussen to rewrite the standard history of prose poetry, finding its origins not in 1918 but in the obedient socialist prose poetry of the 1950s. Recite and Refuse places the work of state-sponsored writers in mutual relationship to prose poems by unorthodox and avant-garde poets, from cadre writers like Ke Lan and Guo Feng to the border-crossing intellectual and poet Liu Zaifu to experimental artists such as Ouyang Jianghe and Xi Chuan. The volume features never-before seen English translations that range from the representative to the exceptional, culminating with Ouyang Jianghe’s masterpiece “Hanging Coffin.” Reading across the spectrum enables us to see the way that artists interact with each other, how they compete and cooperate, and how their interactions, as well as their creations, continuously reinvent both poetry and prose.

Push Open the Window

Push Open the Window PDF Author: Qingping Wang
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781556593307
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A poetic and powerful cultural exchange between the world's superpowers.

New Perspectives on Contemporary Chinese Poetry

New Perspectives on Contemporary Chinese Poetry PDF Author: C. Lupke
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230610145
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
This book brings together fresh research from experts on contemporary Chinese poetry, built upon one of the most glorious poetic traditions of any civilization in the world yet historically neglected by scholars in English. This comprehensive volume offers readable and provocative treatments of many of the most important Chinese poets of our age.

Jade Ladder

Jade Ladder PDF Author: W. N. Herbert
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Limited
ISBN: 9781852248956
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Comprehensive anthology of contemporary Chinese poetry. Indispensable reading for anyone with an interest in the future not just of China, but of poetry.

The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry

The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry PDF Author: Eliot Weinberger
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811216050
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Provides translations of more than two hundred-fifty poems by over forty poets, from early anonymous poetry through the T'ang and Sung dynasties.

Out of the Howling Storm

Out of the Howling Storm PDF Author: Beidao
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 9780819512109
Category : Chinese poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
Jervey Tervalon's novel about young people in South Central Los Angeles grows out of his experience teaching in a high school there and his pain at the death of one of his favorite students.

Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry

Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry PDF Author: Michelle Mi-Hsi Yeh
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300059472
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Presents more than three hundred poems by sixty-six poets from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong translated into modern English.

The Flowering of Modern Chinese Poetry

The Flowering of Modern Chinese Poetry PDF Author:
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773599444
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
A collection of early twentieth-century vernacular poetry that foreshadows the emergence of the modern Chinese nation.