Reminiscence: The Revival of Past Events in Chinese Classical Literature

Author: Yu Wenyan / Zheng Xueqin (USA)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-12-01
Features: This book is a study of Chinese classical literature by a sinologist, serving as impressionistic criticism based on the author's personal insights. From the vast array of classical texts, the authors select over ten poems and prose, unexpectedly linking them together. Through brilliant readings, imaginations, analyses, and research, they highlight a classic image and fundamental motif of Chinese classical literature: nostalgia. As a richly connoted intellectual and artistic act, nostalgia is not only a reproduction and lamentation of past events and history but also embodies the "ontological" anxiety of Confucian scholars pursuing "immortality." It further reflects the tradition and mode of thinking of "looking backward," a cultural and intellectual pattern that has endured for thousands of years in China. The book is not arranged chronologically and does not seek to categorize its discussions. Through novel, unique, yet well-supported arguments and analyses, the authors attempt to construct a hall of nostalgia for us: "Poetry, objects, and landscapes outline a space, through which the past returns to us."