4 ms·

When I was a graduate student, one of my advisors tried to steer me away from focusing on periods of history where textual sources are/were more, shall we say,

by whakim 6y ago

When I was a graduate student, one of my advisors tried to steer me away from focusing on periods of history where textual sources are/were more, shall we say, fluid. (In my particular case, this was Warring States China - I ended up pursuing early medieval Chinese literature so it was moot anyways). The point here is that academic careers are made or broken and some research is totally discredited while other research gains more prominence on the back of the vagaries of archaeological finds and determinations of authenticity. Within that the world, the stakes are extremely high.

thaumasiotes 6y ago
> I ended up pursuing early medieval Chinese literature I read https://www.amazon.com/dp/1624666302/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/1624666302/ (Selections from the Taiping Guangji, by Ditter, Choo, and Allen) and would love to find more books like it. It translates some stories and prefaces each one with introductory and explanatory material covering concepts used in the story ("侠 has referred to different things over the centuries..." / "most animals are depicted as being able to take human or animal form at will, but tigers are an exception, requiring their skins to resume animal form" / "readers would have recognized that the neighborhood the protagonist lives in is, while not especially well-off itself, physically next to an extremely wealthy neighborhood" / "the tiger uses 'inclination toward mountains and forests' literally, and her husband interprets it differently because this is a conventional expression referring to the retirement of an official from public life"). The introductory/explanatory material adds an incredible amount of value for me. Might you be able to recommend anything similar?
- whakim 6y ago
  One recommendation I have (although I'm not sure if it fits the bill here) is Stephen Owen's Anthology of Chinese Literature. Owen is a total genius (speaking of the Taiping Guangji, I remember sitting in a seminar with him where he'd ad-lib these incredible translations of similar stories from a slightly earlier collection that I'd struggled with for hours), and it's not often that so magnificent a scholar will write a relatively introductory work. The book is a lot broader than the one you mentioned, so the explanatory material and annotations are necessarily a little bit briefer, but I find that Owen does a good job of putting each of the works in context and pointing out particularly notable points of poetry or prose. If you do have a more specific period interest I'd be happy to provide a more accurate recommendation (although I know very little about scholarship on anything written in the last millennium or so, ha!)

by whakim 6y ago

thaumasiotes 6y ago

> I ended up pursuing early medieval Chinese literature I read https://www.amazon.com/dp/1624666302/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/1624666302/ (Selections from the Taiping Guangji, by Ditter, Choo, and Allen) and would love to find more books like it. It translates some stories and prefaces each one with introductory and explanatory material covering concepts used in the story ("侠 has referred to different things over the centuries..." / "most animals are depicted as being able to take human or animal form at will, but tigers are an exception, requiring their skins to resume animal form" / "readers would have recognized that the neighborhood the protagonist lives in is, while not especially well-off itself, physically next to an extremely wealthy neighborhood" / "the tiger uses 'inclination toward mountains and forests' literally, and her husband interprets it differently because this is a conventional expression referring to the retirement of an official from public life"). The introductory/explanatory material adds an incredible amount of value for me. Might you be able to recommend anything similar?

whakim 6y ago
One recommendation I have (although I'm not sure if it fits the bill here) is Stephen Owen's Anthology of Chinese Literature. Owen is a total genius (speaking of the Taiping Guangji, I remember sitting in a seminar with him where he'd ad-lib these incredible translations of similar stories from a slightly earlier collection that I'd struggled with for hours), and it's not often that so magnificent a scholar will write a relatively introductory work. The book is a lot broader than the one you mentioned, so the explanatory material and annotations are necessarily a little bit briefer, but I find that Owen does a good job of putting each of the works in context and pointing out particularly notable points of poetry or prose. If you do have a more specific period interest I'd be happy to provide a more accurate recommendation (although I know very little about scholarship on anything written in the last millennium or so, ha!)