Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters

Front Cover
Harvard Univ Asia Center, 1998 - Literary Collections - 483 pages
This translation of 65 pieces from Qian Zhongshu's Guanzhui bian (Limited Views) makes available for the first time in English a representative selection from Qian's massive four-volume collection of essays and reading notes on the classics of early Chinese literature.
 

Contents

CONTENTS
13
The Meaning Surpasses the Image
29
Worldly Frustration and Literary Composition
35
Personal Conduct and Literary Style
41
Poetic Landscapes and Fidelity to Nature
48
The Corruption of Consciousness
56
Sadness as the Primary Value in Music
67
Saddened by a Height
74
The Insights and Myopia of Mystical Philosophies
263
67
267
Heaven and Earth Are Inhuman the Sage Is Inhuman
269
Modeling Oneself on Nature
282
74
289
Fallacia Divisionis
290
On Not Speaking While Speaking
297
Right Words Look Like Contradictions
304

Complex Emotions in Literature
83
Script and Nature Script and Painting
91
Resonance in Criticism on the Arts
97
Metaphors Have Two Handles and Several Sides
121
Human Life Is Like Ice
130
Gifts with Symbolic Meanings
141
The Domesticating Metaphor
148
Synaesthesia
155
The Name but Not the Reality
163
Impossible Tropes
171
On Not Recognizing Mirrors
180
The Motif of the Other Shore
189
The Hermeneutic Circle
195
Characters with Multiple Meanings Used Simultaneously
202
Dialectics in Words and Emotions
208
Chiasmus
215
Quoting Out of Context
221
Poetic Conventions and the Problem of Distorted Meaning
231
Literary Style and the Detection of Forgeries
239
61
247
Literary Writing and Utilitarian Prose
248
On Laozi with Reference to Buddhism
255
Fate Versus Divine Justice
311
Witchcraft
326
86
330
More Joy on Earth than in Heaven
332
Time in Heaven Earth and Hell
339
Rebuking Heaven
345
Born from a Brush and Killed by a Painting
353
Stupefying the People
363
The Concepts Chinese and Barbarian
373
Giving Books to the Barbarians
382
91
391
Marriage and Fate
393
Monks and Lice
401
Tears at Partings
412
97
416
Works Cited
421
121
456
Finding List
463
130
465
Index of Proper Names Titles and Terms
471
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About the author (1998)

Ronald C. Egan is Professor of Sinology in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Stanford University.