Three Kingdoms and Chinese Culture, livre ebook

A multi-disciplinary exploration of China's first great classical novel, Three Kingdoms, and its influence on Chinese culture.

A multi-disciplinary exploration of China's first great classical novel, Three Kingdoms, and its influence on Chinese culture.

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.

Foreword: The Language of Values in the Ming Novel Three Kingdoms
Moss Roberts

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Kimberly Besio and Constantine Tung

Part I Three Kingdoms and Chinese Values

1. Cosmic Foreordination and Human Commitment: The Tragic Volition in Three Kingdoms
Constantine Tung

2. Essential Regrets: The Structure of Tragic Consciousnessin in Three Kingdoms
Dominic Cheung

3. The Notion of Appropriateness (Yi) in Three Kingdoms
Jiyuan Yu

Part II Three Kingdoms and Chinese History

4. The Beginning of the End: The Fall of the Han and the Opening of Three Kingdoms
George A. Hayden

5. Selected Historical Sources for Three Kingdoms: Reflections from Sima Guang’s and Chen Liang’s Reconstructions of Kongming’s Story
Hoyt Cleveland Tillman

Part III Three Kingdoms in Chinese Drama and Art

6. Zhuge Liang and Zhang Fei: Bowang shao tun and Competing Masculine Ideals within the Development of the Three Kingdoms Story Cycle
Kimberly Besio

7. The Theme of Three Kingdoms in Chinese Popular Woodblock Prints
Catherine Pagani

8. Three Kingdoms at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century: The Shanghai Jingju Company’s Cao Cao and Yang Xiu
Elizabeth Wichmann-Walczak

Part IV Three Kingdoms in Contemporary East Asia

9. From Three Kingdoms the Novel to Three Kingdoms the Television Series: Gains, Losses, and Implications
Junhao Hong

10. The Reception and Place of Three Kingdoms in South Korea
Jinhee Kim

11. Studies of Three Kingdoms in the New Century
Bojun Shen
Translated by Kimberly Besio

Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index