The best Chinese Literary Criticism books: Reddit reviews

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This is what Harada says, " Each one of you must clean yourself thoroughly and then bring the matter of the ego-self to a conclusion. If Joshu's words are not understood in this way, a great mistake will arise."

You haven't encontered a real Zen Master but are rather interested in a Buddhist cult out of Japan. Zen Masters don't believe that religious practices imply anything real whatsoever. Here is a text by one of them...it's a different beast entirely.

Idk if this helps for writing but I came across this book called “Understanding Chinese Fantasy Genre” by Jeremy Bai. https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Chinese-Fantasy-Genres-xuanhuan-ebook/dp/B08NP119NH/ref=nodl_

I missed where Brian linked his own published BCR book on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Cliff-Record-Book-Qualities/dp/B09BKGSH6T

Someone outside reddit helped me out.

You are definitely too "something" to be believed. That is for certain.

There's a solid English translation of The Plum in the Golden Vase

The man who translated it was the son of a Presbyterian missionary in China prior to the revolution, and Jin Ping Mei was the first "sexy" text he'd ever come across. As a teenager from a religious family he was naturally obsessed with it, then went on to be a professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures at UChicago. He then applied his formidable talents to translating one of the horniest texts in Chinese literature for an English audience. Highly recommended.

Sounds like lots of speculation. How could it be that you are so sure there is a translation problem in Zen texts, but you don't have even one example?

Not even one?

Might I suggest a book you could read?

https://www.amazon.com/Nineteen-Ways-Looking-Wang-More/dp/0811226204/

After that, you could have a legit opinion and stuff.

I ended up getting this one Amazon.com: Tao Te Ching a Bilingual Edition by D.C. Lau and it's really everything I could hope for.

It consists of two parts, the first has the "Wang Pi" version of the Tao Te Ching, which is the most well known, with for each verse the Chinese version and English Translation.

The second part is based on scrolls that were found more recently but that are some of the oldest versions of the Tao Te Ching that are known, also bilingual. There's also a great general introduction.

If you have time to get it and read it before the lesson, try Ezra Pound's The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry. He basically uses Chinese writing as a basis for Imagism, which was a crucial form for many Modernists, including himself, William Carlos Williams, Amy Lowell, etc.

In the 1920s & '30s, Imagism via Chinese writing was a hip way of writing. I imagine it would be interesting to the students that their language was tapped by American poets.

I agree, and there are still areas that are virtually untapped. One of my favorite reads recently, is Chinese Theories of Fiction, which talks about many aspects of the craft from Chinese literature's perspective, and looks at the similarities and differences from Western literature. It's of particular interest to me since I study Chinese literature, but it's a great read for anyone interested in literature theory or criticism.