Anthology of Tang and Song Tales

"With this collection of short classical language fiction, Lu Xun effectively defined the canonical Tang and Song prose narratives for his and subsequent generations of modern Chinese readers. But many later scholars and translators have concentrated on only a few of these stories, leaving the rest virtually ignored. Now, nearly a century after Lu Xun's original publication, this combination of text, translation, and explanatory notes all in one volume will guarantee that Anthology of Tang and Song Tales will introduce new generations of students and comparatists around the world to the range of narrative experimentation carried out by the writers of those centuries, as Lu Xun would have intended."

"Lu Xun's Tang Song chuanqi ji pioneered the study of medieval Chinese narratives in the modern era. The master's scholarly analysis, historical sensibility, and aesthetic taste provided the ancient genre an extraordinary glamour unknown even to the ancients. Based on Lu Xun's canonical work, Victor Mair and Zhenjun Zhang have presented a remarkable collection of Tang and Song tales in English translation. Readers will find in it a wide spectrum of tales, from the fantastic to the historical and the chivalric to the legendary. This is a marvelous reader for anyone interested in Chinese and world literature."

"This volume will be invaluable both to scholars and students of premodern Chinese narrative and those studying its twentieth-century reception. Both the most celebrated examples of the genre and undeservedly overlooked works are presented in lucid, carefully annotated translations, quite a few of them never previously published. Inclusion of complete Chinese texts makes this collection particularly useful for students and teachers of Chinese literature, history, and Classical Chinese language."

"This is the first English translation of Lu Xun's seminal anthology of Tang and Song period stories. The selection Lu Xun put together is a landmark anthology, important not only for its representation of this kind of writing from medieval China but also as a milestone in twentieth-century attitudes towards traditional Chinese 'fiction.' Lu Xun's anthology is now still widely read."

"One will not be able to understand the piquancy of Tang Song fictional imagination without reading the most representative works in the genre, collected by Lu Xun in his Tang Song chuanqi ji. Thanks to the masterful work by the editors and translators, this volume for the first time makes Lu Xun's important anthology accessible in its entirety to the Anglophone world. It is a significant contribution to the study of traditional Chinese fiction in general and Tang Song tales in particular."

"The value of Lu Xun's Anthology of Tang and Song Tales is in its penetrating insights. Practically all of Lu Xun's creative works have been made available to the Western reader. Now the expert rendition of these Tang and Song tales will further extend the accessibility to his scholarly works."

"It is impossible to describe all of the thought-provoking questions that this book raises. Its nearly eight hundred pages are packed full of material that will be essential for any teacher of Chinese narrative genres."

Victor H Mair, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, has been teaching there since 1979. He specializes in Buddhist popular literature as well as the vernacular tradition of Chinese fiction and the performing arts. Beginning in the early 1990s, Professor Mair has led an interdisciplinary research project on the Bronze Age and Iron Age mummies of Eastern Central Asia. Among other results of his efforts during this period are six documentaries for television (Scientific American, NOVA, BBC, Discovery Channel, History Channel, and German Television), a major international conference, numerous articles, and a book, The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West (Thames and Hudson, 2000). He is also the author of numerous other publications (including several anthologies from Columbia University Press) and is the editor of Sino-Platonic Papers, the ABC Chinese Dictionary Series (University of Hawai'i Press), and the Cambria Sinophone World Series. He blogs frequently for Language Log.

Zhenjun Zhang received his PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, MA at Beijing University, and BA at Zhengzhou University, China. He is currently Associate Professor of Asian Studies & Modern Languages and Literatures at St. Lawrence University. His research interests focus on pre-modern Chinese literature, especially fiction and its interaction with history, religions, and culture. His publications include Hidden and Visible Realms: Early Medieval Chinese Tales of the Supernatural and the Fantastic (Columbia University, 2018), Song Dynasty Tales: a Guided Reader (co-authored with Jing Wang, World Scientific, 2017), Buddhism and Tales of the Supernatural in Early Medieval China (Brill, 2014). He is also the author of Chuantong xiaoshuo yu Zhongguo wenhua 傳統小說與中國文化 (Guangxi Normal University, 1996), co-author of Liaozhai zhiyi pingshang dacheng 聊齋志異評賞大成 (Lijiang, 1994), and Jingu yu chaoyue: cong Sanyan Erpai kan Zhongguo shimin xintai 禁錮與超越：從三言二拍看中國市民心態 (Guoji wenhua 1988), as well as editor of several series of Classical Chinese novels and Daoist Texts. Currently he is working on two book projects: Chinese Culture through Legends and Fiction and Dreams in Early and Medieval Chinese Tales.

Sample Chapter(s)
Preface and Selection Rules, by Lu Xun (Translated by Zhenjun Zhang and Victor H. Mair)
Introduction
Tale 1.1 The Record of the Ancient Mirror