Description

Yale University Press, Published 1975. Hardcover, x, 294 pp.; 25 cm. In Very Good condition with a Good dust jacket. Orange-red cloth boards, black lettering on spine, with mild shelf and edge wear. Binding tight. Previous owner's name, location and date (summer 1981) in ink on front pastedown, with a pen note referencing Han Yu and p. 208 at top of pastedown. Mild foxing to endpapers. Small ink arrow in margin of p. 208. Otherwise unmarked. Dust jacket reproduces Meng Chiao's poem "Cold Creek" in calligraphy from a facsimile of a Northern Sung edition; 3/4-inch tear along front fold and several nicks and tears of an inch or less, increasing toward edges, with mild to moderate overall shelf wear, some soiling and foxing, heavier on rear panel and edges of flaps. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. Owen's first book, revised from his 1972 Yale dissertation. He reads Meng Chiao (751-814) and Han Yu (768-824) as the Mid-T'ang poets who carried the fu-ku ("return to antiquity") program into verse: Meng's harsh lyric style, Han's move from didactic poetry to narrative and cosmic landscape poetry, and the linked verses the two wrote together from 806. Poems are given in Owen's translations throughout, with an index-glossary of Chinese terms. Owen later became James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard, completed a six-volume translation of the complete poems of Du Fu (2015), and shared the 2018 Tang Prize in Sinology. Contents: Acknowledgments; List of Abbreviations; Introduction; Fu-ku and T'ang Poetry; The Early Poetry of Meng Chiao; Han Yu's Early Life and Poetry; Meng Chiao's Poetry on His Failure and After; The Growth of the Narrative: Han Yu; Han Yu's Exile: 804-806; The Linked Verses: 806; Meng Chiao: The Symbolic Landscape, 806-814; Meng Chiao's Vision of the Poet; The Poet and the Symbolic Landscape: Han Yu; Worlds of Disorder: Han Yu's Mythopoeic Poetry; The Cult Hermetic: 806-814; Affirmation of the Tradition: Han Yu; Han Yu's Later Poetry: 813-825; Index-Glossary.