Du Fu's Six Quatrain Collections with Annotations

Author: (Tang) Du Fu / Guo Shaoyu (Editor-in-Chief)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2001-10-01
Features: The Collected Annotations on Du Fu's "Playfully Written Six Quatrain Sequences" and the Annotations on Yuan Haowen's "Thirty Poems on Poetry" are my old drafts. The Collected Annotations on Du Fu's "Playfully Written Six Quatrain Sequences" were previously published and have now been supplemented and expanded. The Annotations on Yuan Haowen's "Thirty Poems on Poetry" are an old draft in the form of collected annotations, now organized and revised. The original title of the old drafts was "Collected Annotations on Du Fu, Yuan, and Wang's Poems on Poetry." There was also a separate entry by Wang Shizhen, but as his poems have less relevance to literary theory, they have been omitted from this edition. Du Fu's "Playfully Written Six Quatrain Sequences" are subject to diverse interpretations and require clarification, hence the adoption of the collected annotations format.
Collected annotations, though seemingly a compilation of materials, offer many conveniences for academic research: First, gathering materials in one place, arranging and categorizing them, helps identify key issues and facilitates selection and critique. Second, some interpretations, though not fully substantiated, may raise questions that inspire new perspectives. Third, the annotations I have added may contain errors, such as misquoting or misinterpreting passages, or flawed criticisms. Preserving the original text allows for verification and correction. Fourth, when reading, one may easily become overconfident in their insights. Through the work of collected annotations, one realizes that some ideas were already expressed by predecessors, fostering a more humble attitude.