Details

ISBN-10: 0295746114
ISBN-13: 9780295746111
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Publish Date: 09/03/2019
Dimensions: 9.00" L, 6.00" W, 0.72" H

Idle Talk Under the Bean Arbor: A Seventeenth-Century Chinese Story Collection

With: Ziran The Eccentric Wanderer
Editor: Robert E Hegel

Paperback

Price: $32.00

Overview

Written around 1660, the unique Chinese short story collection Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor (Doupeng xianhua), by the author known only as Aina the Layman, uses the seemingly innocuous setting of neighbors swapping yarns on hot summer days under a shady arbor to create a series of stories that embody deep disillusionment with traditional values. The tales, ostensibly told by different narrators, parody heroic legends and explore issues that contributed to the fall of the Ming dynasty a couple of decades before this collection was written, including self-centeredness and social violence. These stories speak to all troubled times, demanding that readers confront the pretense that may lurk behind moralistic stances.

Idle Talk under the Bean Arbor presents all twelve stories in English translation along with notes from the original commentator, as well as a helpful introduction and analysis of individual stories.

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Reviews

"Editor Robert Hegel has assembled an erudite team of luminaries in late imperial translation and scholarship. . . . It is, in short, a valuable and comprehensive research tool for the original Doupeng xianhua in particular and for late imperial fiction in general. Being so many different things, the volume is accessible and useful to a number of audiences: casual readers looking to escape the heat of a summer afternoon reading; undergraduates familiarizing themselves with the breadth and depth of Chinese letters; and specialists in the field."–Nathaniel Isaacson, China Review International

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Details

ISBN-10: 0295746114
ISBN-13: 9780295746111
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Publish Date: 09/03/2019
Dimensions: 9.00" L, 6.00" W, 0.72" H
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