5 ms·
What would be the Chinese equivalent of the illiad be? (well equivalents, there are going to be more than one)
by KaiserPro 3y ago
What would be the Chinese equivalent of the illiad be? (well equivalents, there are going to be more than one)
- j7ake 3y agoJourney to the west. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West
- optimalsolver 3y agoIsn't that the Chinese equivalent of the Odyssey?
- TheAceOfHearts 3y agoI was looking for this comment just to give it a +1. Journey to the West has had a massive cultural impact and it's delightful to see where a lot of those memes originated. Fans of modern fantasy will feel right at home.
- AdmiralAsshat 3y agoWater Margin? Journey West? Romance of the Three Kingdoms?
- squaresmile 3y agoAnd Dream of the Red Chamber to round up the four great Chinese classical novels
- tmtvl 3y agoAnd to round off the six most beloved, The Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei), and The Scholars (AKA Unofficial History of the Scholars).
- dash2 3y agoCan you recommend any good one-volume translations of those?
- AdmiralAsshat 3y agoNope! I have to profess, as an American, my primary exposure to the three aforementioned novels has been filtered through Japanese adaptions (e.g. the Romance of the Three Kingdoms videogames, Suikoden, Dragon Ball, Dynasty Warriors, etc.). I think it would be great for China to take a stab at adapting the stories for an international audience as a game/movie/TV series.
- _a_a_a_ 3y agoDunno, but Monkey ('Journey to the West') by Wu Cheng'en was a great book as I remember. Wish I had time to read it again.
- generic92034 3y agoThat baffles me. Why do you think you do not have the time? Certainly, if reading the book again is important enough for you, you could lower the priority of some other occupation/task/...?
- _a_a_a_ 3y agoThere are many books I want to read, and even more things I want to do. Then there are things I need to do like pay the rent.
- feverzsj 3y agoI don't think there is anything close to epic poems for Han Chinese. Though China government claims Gesar of Tibet, Jangar of Mongol and Manas of Kyrgyz, are the three epic poems of China.
- zozbot234 3y agoTrue, but some of the commentaries to the Spring and Autumn Annals are written in a highly refined style that one could describe as akin to poetry, especially the Zuo Zhuan. Of course this is better described as history rather than epic, but the two genres share similar goals especially for the period.
- hnfong 3y agoThe literary style of Zuo Zhuan can be described as highly refined if you wish, but not quite "poetic". It's basically a very succinct style of old Chinese. And it reads more like a diary than an epic story. I'd say Shiji feels more similar to an epic, at least a couple stories in it has an air of exaggeration :D
- Leary 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_of_Poetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_of_Poetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Documents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Documents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Rites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Rites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_and_Autumn_Annals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_and_Autumn_Annals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuo_Zhuan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuo_Zhuan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Records_of_the_Grand_Historian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Records_of_the_Grand_Historian
- rKarpinski 3y agoRomance of the Three Kingdoms It's about a multi-decade civil war almost 2 thousand years ago & is the oldest of their classic novels and the characters are all household names. And many similar character types ... Diaochan <> Hellen, Lu Bu <> Achilles, Zhuge Liang <> Odysseus etc.
- boppo1 3y agoBest translation?
- tmtvl 3y agoMoss Roberts' unabridged version is the one you want.
- RheingoldRiver 3y agoMoss Roberts, and it's not even a question. It's very dense though and there's like a billion names to keep track of, I only made it through the first ~1/3 of the first volume (out of 4) before I had to give up. I want to revisit one day but I would need some sort of reading guide to follow along with that lets me look up all the character names and who is on which side etc.
- Symbiote 3y agoI sometimes find it difficult to keep track of all the names in a science fiction book when they're in some invented language (wads Acenta the good one, or Arinca?). It's easy when they have English or English-ish names. The same happens when reading a book with Chinese names. An ebook that coloured the names according to their side might help.
- RheingoldRiver 3y agoIt also doesn't help that each character has two names, like Liu Bei is both Liu Bei & Xuande, and the two names are used nearly interchangeably for most characters. And the text doesn't handhold you with dialogue & other continuity clues to remind you of relationships (e.g. "Good morning," said Alice. Bob looked up as his daughter entered the room. - without breaking the flow of the text this reminds you of the relationship between Alice & Bob).