An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911

As expected; it's a required textbook.

All stories in translation (English), one of the more comprehensive collections out there anywhere, and on such availability!Still, it would be nice to have the original (or a version of the original) provided as well, preferably as a companion edition, this one already runs a few hundred pages!

As a westerner who studies ancient Chinese Culture, I've "palled around" with this anthology for about two years. My first Chinese literature teacher taught out of it, but as an introductory text it fell short and most of the class couldn't get into the material as it's presented here.The translations, as far as I know, are accurate, or at least as accurate as you can expect, though they're also quite lifeless. I'll be amazed if the students reading the poems in this book actually come away with the feeling that they've just read poetry-- I certainly didn't.What doesn't help is that Owen provides the bare minimum in terms of supplementary annotations. He gives most of the literary eras a measly three-or-so paragraphs of "explanation" before spamming the reader with his impressive collection of literal yet glossless translations. For a work of this magnitude, from a scholar who's written captivating works about Chinese literature in the past, there is simply no excuse for this.And here's the rub: if you want to learn more about Chinese literature, you can read the numerous, far superior translations of the great novels, the philosophers, the histories, the most famous poets Li Bai and Dufu, etc, by Arthur Waley, Burtson Watson, and so on. If you want to delve even deeper, you can try Cyril Birch's anthology. And if you want to take learning about Chinese literature seriously, you'd better start learning classical Chinese. In short, this book is, sad to say, pretty darn useless. It's not fit for casual readers, and unfortunately due to the lack of deeper effort, it's not going to be helping any scholars either.

Excellent collection of Chinese poems-assigned at University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN-

I like anything written by Dr. Owen.

"big book, big drag" quipped callimachus some two millenia ago. Though I don't always share his dislike of literary largeness, in this case his words ring cruelly trueThe quality of the translations is overall quite poor. That is, one can't tell what is being said. The footnotes don't clear things up, and the introductory notes are often as not simply fatuous. Cyril Branch's anthology from Columbia, though not great, is worlds better than this shoddy magnum opus.

This book is REALLY big, so it has plenty of information. If you're into chinese literature or just a little curious there's definitely something inside for you!

good