Three Kingdoms

Author: Guanzhong Luo
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520344553
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 477

Book Description
“A material epic with an astonishing fidelity to history."—New York Times Book Review Three Kingdoms tells the story of the fateful last reign of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 220), when the Chinese empire was divided into three warring kingdoms. Writing some twelve hundred years later, the Ming author Luo Guanzhong drew on histories, dramas, and poems portraying the crisis to fashion a sophisticated, compelling narrative that has become the Chinese national epic. This abridged edition captures the novel's intimate and unsparing view of how power is wielded, how diplomacy is conducted, and how wars are planned and fought. As important for Chinese culture as the Homeric epics have been for the West, this Ming dynasty masterpiece continues to be widely influential in China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam and remains a great work of world literature.

Three Kingdoms and Chinese Culture

Author: Kimberly Besio
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791480496
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Book Description
This is the first book-length treatment in English of Three Kingdoms (Sanguo yanyi), often regarded as China's first great classical novel. Set in the historical period of the disunion (220–280 AD), Three Kingdoms fuses history and popular tradition to create a sweeping epic of heroism and political ambition. The essays in this volume explore the multifarious connections between Three Kingdoms and Chinese culture from a variety of disciplines, including history, literature, philosophy, art history, theater, cultural studies, and communications, demonstrating the diversity of backgrounds against which this novel can be studied. Some of the most memorable episodes and figures in Chinese literature appear within its pages, and Three Kingdoms has had a profound influence on personal, social, and political behavior, even language usage, in the daily life of people in China today. The novel has inspired countless works of theater and art, and, more recently, has been the source for movies and a television series. Long popular in other countries of East Asia, such as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, Three Kingdoms has also been introduced to younger generations around the globe through a series of extremely popular computer games. This study helps create a better understanding of the work's unique place in Chinese culture.

The Three Kingdoms, Volume 3: Welcome The Tiger

Author: Luo Guanzhong
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 146291439X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 710

Book Description
This exciting new translation of the Chinese classic is designed to delight modern readers. The Three Kingdoms is an epic Chinese novel written over six centuries ago. It recounts in vivid historical detail the turbulent years at the close of the Han Dynasty when China broke into three competing kingdoms and over half the population was killed or driven from their homes. readers will experience the loyalty and treachery, the brotherhood and rivalry of China's legendary heroes and villains during the most tumultuous period in Chinese history. Part myth, part reality, The Three Kingdoms is considered the most significant work in classic Chinese literature. Many Chinese people view it not only as a work of art but also as a moral guide to success in life and business. Foreigners often read it to gain insights into Chinese society and culture. From the saga of The Three Kingdoms, readers will learn how great warriors motivated their troops and enhanced their influence while disguising their weaknesses and turning the strengths of others against them. Complete with footnotes and a detailed character list, this readable new edition is sure to thrill today's readers from all over the world. Full of dramatic twists and turns, this third volume offers an exciting conclusion to the tale of Liu Bei, Zhang Fei and Guan Yu.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Author: Luo Guanzhong
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788892532168
Category : Chinese fiction
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, attributed to Luo Guanzhong, is a historical novel set in the turbulent years towards the end of the Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history, starting in 169 AD and ending with the reunification of the land in 280. The story - part historical, part legend, and part mythical - romanticises and dramatises the lives of feudal lords and their retainers, who tried to replace the dwindling Han dynasty or restore it. While the novel follows hundreds of characters, the focus is mainly on the three power blocs that emerged from the remnants of the Han dynasty, and would eventually form the three states of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu. The novel deals with the plots, personal and military battles, intrigues, and struggles of these states to achieve dominance for almost 100 years. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is acclaimed as one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature; it has a total of 800,000 words and nearly a thousand dramatic characters (mostly historical) in 120 chapters. The novel is among the most beloved works of literature in East Asia.

Three Kingdoms

Author: Guanzhong Luo
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520215856
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 520

Book Description
As important for Chinese culture as the Homeric epics have been for the West, this Ming dynasty masterpiece tells the story of the fateful last reign of the Han dynasty (206 C.C.-A.D. 220) when the Chinese empire was divided into three warring kingdoms.

Chinese Fairy Tales and Fantasies

Author: Moss Roberts
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 0307760421
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
This collection of tales opens up a magical world far from our customary haunts. Ghost stories, romances, fables, and heroic sagas: the forms are familiar, but the characters we meet surprise us at every turn. For those who know and love the tales of the Grimms and Andersen, the universal themes of fairy tale literature emerge in these classic stories, but with a sophistication that is uniquely Chinese and altogether entrancing. With black-and-white drawings throughout Part of the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library

Fate and Prognostication in the Chinese Literary Imagination

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004427570
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
The essays collected in Fate and Prognostication in the Chinese Literary Imagination deal with the philosophical, psychological, gender and cultural issues in the Chinese conception of fate as represented in literary texts and films, with a focus placed on human efforts to solve the riddles of fate prediction. Viewed in this light, the collected essays unfold a meandering landscape of the popular imaginary in Chinese beliefs and customs. The chapters in this book represent concerted efforts in research originated from a project conducted at the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. Contributors are Michael Lackner, Kwok-kan Tam, Monika Gaenssbauer, Terry Siu-han Yip, Xie Qun, Roland Altenburger, Jessica Tsui-yan Li, Kaby Wing-Sze Kung, Nicoletta Pesaro, Yan Xu-Lackner, and Anna Wing Bo Tso.

Ithaca Forever

Author: Luigi Malerba
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520383192
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 179

Book Description
After twenty years, Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca, but instead of receiving the homecoming he had hoped for finds himself caught in an intense battle of wills with his faithful and long-suffering wife Penelope. When Penelope recognizes him under the guise of a beggar, she becomes furious with him for not trusting her enough to include her in his plans for ridding the palace of the Suitors. As a result, she plays her own game of fictions to make him suffer for this lack of faith, inspiring jealousy, self-doubt, and misgivings in her husband, the legendary Homeric hero. In this captivating retelling of the Odyssey, Penelope rises as a major force with whom to be reckoned. Shifting between first-person reflections, Ithaca Forever reveals the deeply personal and powerful perspectives of both wife and husband as they struggle for respect and supremacy within a marriage that has been on hold for twenty years. Translated by PEN award-winner Douglas Grant Heise, Luigi Malerba’s novel gives us a remarkable version of this greatest work of western literature: Odysseus as a man full of doubts and Penelope as a woman of great depth and strength.

The Kingdoms

Author: Natasha Pulley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635576091
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Book Description
For fans of The 7 1⁄2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and David Mitchell, a genre bending, time twisting alternative history that asks whether it's worth changing the past to save the future, even if it costs you everyone you've ever loved. Joe Tournier has a bad case of amnesia. His first memory is of stepping off a train in the nineteenth-century French colony of England. The only clue Joe has about his identity is a century-old postcard of a Scottish lighthouse that arrives in London the same month he does. Written in illegal English-instead of French-the postcard is signed only with the letter “M,” but Joe is certain whoever wrote it knows him far better than he currently knows himself, and he's determined to find the writer. The search for M, though, will drive Joe from French-ruled London to rebel-owned Scotland and finally onto the battle ships of a lost empire's Royal Navy. Swept out to sea with a hardened British sea captain named Kite, who might know more about Joe's past than he's willing to let on, Joe will remake history, and himself. From bestselling author Natasha Pulley, The Kingdoms is an epic, romantic, wildly original novel that bends genre as easily as it twists time.

Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades

Author: Oakley Hall
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520353870
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 391

Book Description
The Morton Street Slasher has been leaving the corpses of his victims around San Francisco's Union Square. On the women's naked bodies are spade playing cards. The city's infamous newspaperman, Ambrose Bierce, blames the rash of murders on his old enemy, the Southern Pacific Railroad. A naive reporter at Bierce's Hornet pursues the case, uncovering conspiracy at every turn. In a fast-paced novel that is a combination of murder mystery, historical fiction, and quirky biography, Oakley Hall draws the reader into 1880s San Francisco and the changing world that was California in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Local and state politics, the exploitation of the Chinese, the power of the mining and railroad barons, and San Francisco's colorful history provide a backdrop for this irresistible thriller. The novel's chapters are introduced by appropriate excerpts from Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary and narrated by the young reporter Tom Redmond. Redmond is interested in the murders because of his attraction to a woman threatened by the Slasher, and Bierce encourages him because of his personal vendetta against the Big Four of the Railroad. Bierce's misogyny is an influence as well, which Hall uses to advantage in portraying the enigmatic journalist. Hall knows his territory and his characters well. The sights and smells of late-nineteenth-century California are cleverly evoked, and the story's key players are refreshingly authentic. Bierce brandishes his famed cynicism with all the aplomb of the sharp-eyed, sharp-witted newspaperman he was. Cameo appearances by such California worthies as Ina Coolbrith and Joaquin Miller add to the novel's historical richness. Intelligent, gripping, and often quite funny, Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades will satisfy any reader who craves adventure, mystery, romance, and fine writing.