by Anthony C Yu (Author)
Throughout his academic career, Anthony C. Yu has employed a comparative approach to literary analysis that pays careful attention to the religious and philosophical elements of Chinese and Western texts. His mastery of both canons remains unmatched in the field, and his immense knowledge of the contexts that gave rise to each tradition supplies the foundations for ideal comparative scholarship. In these essays, Yu explores the overlap between literature and religion in Chinese and Western literature. He opens with a principal method for relating texts to religion and follows with several essays that apply this approach to single texts in discrete traditions: the Greek religion in Prometheus; Christian theology in Milton; ancient Chinese philosophical thought in Laozi; and Chinese religious syncretism in The Journey to the West. Yu's essays juxtapose Chinese and Western texts--Cratylus next to Xunzi, for example--and discuss their relationship to language and subjects, such as liberal Greek education against general education in China. He compares a specific Western text and religion to a specific Chinese text and religion. He considers the Divina Commedia in the context of Catholic theology alongside The Journey to the West as it relates to Chinese syncretism, united by the theme of pilgrimage. Yet Yu's focus isn't entirely tied to the classics. He also considers the struggle for human rights in China and how this topic relates to ancient Chinese social thought and modern notions of rights in the West. In virtually every high-cultural system, Yu writes, be it the Indic, the Islamic, the Sino-Japanese, or the Judeo--Christian, the literary tradition has developed in intimate--indeed, often intertwining-relation to religious thought, practice, institution, and symbolism. Comparative Journeys is a major step toward unraveling this complexity, revealing through the skilled observation of texts the extraordinary intimacy between two supposedly disparate languages and cultures.
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 432
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 18 Nov 2008
ISBN 10: 0231143265
ISBN 13: 9780231143264
Book Overview: A number of scholars have touched on the religious elements of Chinese literature, but none, I think, has done so with Anthony C. Yu's professional mastery of the Western and Chinese canonical traditions paired with a sophisticated literary analysis. At the heart of a number of the essays in this volume is a cogent argument that combines both capacities. -- Patrick Hanan, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Chinese Literature, emeritus, Harvard University Anthony C. Yu's unique breadth of learning bridges European and Chinese classic texts, ancient and modern writings, and the disciplines of literary and religious studies, making what Yu says about Plato, Aeschylus, Dante, and Milton, alongside Laozi, Xunzi, and Wu Cheng'en, so rich and suggestive. -- Andrew Plaks, professor of Chinese, comparative literature, and East Asian studies, Princeton University A living contradiction of Kipling's tired saw, Anthony C. Yu bridges the 'twain' of East and West with unsurpassed authority. Comparative Journeys masterfully counters the movement of the sun-and of the Hegelian Spirit. From an opening transhistorical survey of literature and religion worldwide, the book proceeds eastward from two early studies of Milton, through a pivotal consideration of Chinese-Western literary relations, to later essays on such variegated China-based subjects as religious syncretism and the classic epic Xiyouji (Journey to the West), ghosts in Chinese fiction, the political-ethical bearing of the Daodejing, and the relation of Confucianism to human rights. The comparative pieces on Cratylus and Xunzi, the Commedia and the Xiyouji, the problematics of translation, and liberal education in China and the West embody standards to which other East/West comparatists would do well to aspire. -- Eric Ziolkowski, Charles A. Dana Professor of Religious Studies, Lafayette College, and North American general editor of Literature and Theology
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