the experience of the past in classical Chinese literature /
First Statement of Responsibility
Stephen Owen.
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Place of Publication, Distribution, etc.
Cambridge, Mass. :
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
Harvard University Press,
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
1986.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item
147 pages ;
Dimensions
24 cm
INTERNAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES/INDEXES NOTE
Text of Note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 143-144) and index.
CONTENTS NOTE
Text of Note
Introduction: the lure and its origins -- Lush Millet and a stele: the rememberer remembered -- Bones -- A splendor and a fading: the mechanism of necessity -- Fragments -- The snares of memory -- Repetition: of small pleasures in idleness -- A door finely wrought: memory and art -- To be remembered.
0
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
Stephen Owen's book, inspired by Chinese literature, is for all who value literature in any language. "Remembrances" takes up the strongest claims we can make for literature -- that it can sustain life in the present as well as the life of the past. The past has always played a particularly powerful role in Chinese civilization. Owen shows how the fascination with the past came into being in Chinese literature, and he discusses some of the forms it took and the ways readers have responded. He reflects on a series of moments in Chinese writing from the seventh century B.C. to the early nineteenth century, moments when the past rose up with particular force. Through poems, anecdotes, exegeses, and one long story of an ardent collector and his wife, Owen treats a theme basic to Chinese civilization not as an exotic conceit but as a motif fundamental to our own civilization, even though its expression differs from our own. -- From publisher's description.