5 replies to this topic

[xng]

Can anybody recommend an English books (amazon.com) explaining the Tang poetries and other famous chinese poetries.

I need the chinese characters printed but need the English explanation.

Other than Tang poetries, which other dynasty are famous for their poetries ?

[General_Zhaoyun]

Can anybody recommend an English books (amazon.com) explaining the Tang poetries and other famous chinese poetries.

I need the chinese characters printed but need the English explanation.

You might want to try and read The Anchorbook of Chinese Poetry by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping (see http://www.amazon.co...rds=0385721986)

Alternatively, you can try Three Hundred Tang Poems by Peter Harris (see http://www.amazon.co...ds=0307269736). The 300 Tang poems is a compilation dated from Qing dynasty of the major Tang poems.

Other than Tang poetries, which other dynasty are famous for their poetries ?

You might want to consider Song dynasty poem, another high point development of Chinese poetry. Its poetry style is typically known as "Ci 词" (lyric). Both Tang and Song were famous for their poetries. Poetry of Tang dynasty are typically known as "Shi 诗". The difference between Tang poetry and Song poetry is that Tang poetry tends to follow rigid rules for number of words, lines and rhyme, whereas Song poetry basically is a 'free poetry' without any rules and can often be sung.

If you're interested in poetry from Pre-Tang period, you can check out Book of Odes (Shijing 詩經） , Diction of Chu (Chuci 楚辞） or the Raphsody (Fu 赋) of Han dynasty.

[fsnow55]

OP was asking for bilingual poem books.

[TengAiHui]

Can anybody recommend an English books (amazon.com) explaining the Tang poetries and other famous chinese poetries.

I need the chinese characters printed but need the English explanation.

Other than Tang poetries, which other dynasty are famous for their poetries ?

It seems this website meets your needs: 300 Tang Poems
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Edited by TengAiHui, 20 February 2010 - 12:11 AM.

[xng]

OP was asking for bilingual poem books.

Thanks, zhaoyun but I am actually looking for bilingual. The books in amazon are ALL in english.

I need to understand each verse of the poem written in chinese but explained in English.

[P'an An-teh]

Thanks, zhaoyun but I am actually looking for bilingual. The books in amazon are ALL in english.

I need to understand each verse of the poem written in chinese but explained in English.

There is "Sunflower Splendor" edited by Irving Yucheng Lo, an anthology of 3,000 years of poetry from the Shih Ching to Mao Tse-tung. I have the Chinese version which was separately published, but it may be out-of-print: "K'uei Yeh Chi", ed. Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo done in the mid-1970s. The English translation version should be readily available as it is used in college level Chinese lit classes. This anthology is justly famous, and, except for the two-volume "Anthology of Chinese Literature" edited by Cyril Birch, is pretty much the only example with a Chinese-character companion text. I am presuming you are familiar with the bilingual translation process, so bear in mind that the verse here and in nearly all other anthologies or collections of individual Chinese poets are translations, and rarely have a Chinese-on-one-side/English-on-the-other sort of approach. Unless you are searching for "explication du texte" style works by academics in the field of Tang Dynasty poetry, or Yuan drama, or any other of the myriad topics in Chinese literature, well, you will have to make do with idiosyncratic translations only in whatever non-Chinese language you wish. After all, what you seem to looking for is exactly what we students of Chinese literature would like to see but rarely do. As one of the few examples I can think of without searching my own books, "The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain" by Red Pine (Bill Porter) written in the early 1980s does have Chinese/English pages. The free-verse translations are quite good. Nonetheless, such versions are really of interest only to those who know Chinese, and can enjoy at some level a comparative approach towards the written Chinese poem and the translation (English, French, German, Japanese, etc.). The average reader, who should receive the best of Chinese poetry in translation, really isn't interested in such biligual texts, so such books are rarely published. I wish you happy hunting!