Remembrances: The Experience of Past in Classical Chinese Literature

Stephen Owen's book, inspired by Chinese literature, is for all who value literature in any language. "Remembrances" takes up the strongest claims we can make for literature -- that it can sustain life in the present as well as the life of the past. The past has always played a particularly powerful role in Chinese civilization. Owen shows how the fascination with the past came into being in Chinese literature, and he discusses some of the forms it took and the ways readers have responded. He reflects on a series of moments in Chinese writing from the seventh century B.C. to the early nineteenth century, moments when the past rose up with particular force. Through poems, anecdotes, exegeses, and one long story of an ardent collector and his wife, Owen treats a theme basic to Chinese civilization not as an exotic conceit but as a motif fundamental to our own civilization, even though its expression differs from our own. -- From publisher's description.