Chinese and Japanese Languages and Literatures
Yuan Haowen 元好問 (1190-1257)
and the Jin Dynasty 金代 (1115-1234)
Note also the following three webpages dedicated to Chinese literary criticism:
Chinese Literary Criticism – General 中國文學批評, Zhong Rong 鍾嶸 (469-518),
and Tang-Song Literary Criticism 唐宋代文學批評
Book:
The Poetry of Yuan Haowen: Introduced, Interpreted, Explicated (The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2025). xxi,515 pp.
150 poems by Yuan Haowen are presented in romanization and translation, as well as in the original. Treatment of the poems—each fully introduced, interpreted, and explicated—draws upon virtually all available scholarship on the poet in Chinese, Japanese, and Western languages.
Book:
Poems on Poetry: Literary Criticism by Yuan Haowen (1190-1257 ) (1982; rev. ed. Melbourne and Basel: Quirin Press, 2019). xxxi,410,1 pp.
The book includes treatment of four series of poems on poetry by Yuan Haowen: “Thirty Poems on Poetry” 論詩三十首, “Five Postface-Poems Written for the Zhongzhouji (Anthology of the Central Land)” 自題中州集後五首, “Three Poems on Poetry” 論詩三首, and “On Feeling Prompted to Write: Four Poems” 感興四首.
Publisher's webpage: http://quirinpress.com/ISBN/9781922169341.html
The book’s table of contents, table of subjects and themes treated in “Thirty Poems on Poetry,” and preface to the revised edition:
Poems on Poetry Contents, etc.
Treatment of a sample poem from the volume: Poem 18 (from “Thirty Poems on Poetry”) on Meng Jiao and Han Yu:
See Finding lists below, for a listing of Yuan Haowen prose and poetic pieces cited in the work.
For translations of poems on poetry by Du Fu and Dai Fugu that are included as an appendix to the book, see the Tang-Song Literary Criticism webpage.
Reviews of the original edition:
List of reviews of the 1982 edition
Translated book-chapter on Yuan Haowen and Jin poetry:
Chapter on Jin Dynasty 金代 poetry by Yoshikawa Kōjirō 吉川幸次郎, “Chin Dynasty Poetry: Reaction to the Mongol Incursion, 1150-1250,” in idem, Five Hundred Years of Chinese Poetry, 1150-1650: The Chin, Yuan, and Ming Dynasties, John Timothy Wixted, tr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 15-43 (includes a section on Yuan Haowen, pp. 28-42). For more information on the book, see the Post-Song Poetry webpage.
Yoshikawa – Jin Poetry chapter
Chinese texts for the poems cited in the chapter are found on pp. 3-8 of the following, which reproduces the Chinese for all 130 poems translated in the book (plus a few prose pieces and partial poems), 33 pp.; co-compiler Cui Jie 崔洁:
Chinese texts for Five Hundred Years of Chinese Poetry
Finding lists for Yuan Haowen poetry:
Three finding lists are reproduced. (A) “A Finding List for Chinese, Japanese, and Western-Language Annotation to and Translation of Poetry by Yüan Hao-wen,” Bulletin of Sung-Yüan Studies 17 (1981), pp. 140-185, which provides a poem-by-poem listing of Yuan Haowen’s corpus of 1,366 shi 詩 poems. This is supplemented by finding lists for (B) Yuan Haowen poems that appear in the translated chapter of the Yoshikawa book cited above and (C) Yuan Haowen poems that are translated or referred to in the revised Poems on Poetry book cited above.
Finding lists for Yuan Haowen poetry
Research summary:
A narrative of the author’s research interest in Yuan Haowen, as found on pp. 86-89, 85-86, and 106-108 of John Timothy Wixted, “One Westerner’s Research on Chinese and Japanese Languages and Literatures,” Asian Research Trends (The Toyo Bunko), New Series 4 (2009), pp. 77-113. The full text can be found on the General webpage.
Summary of Wixted research interest in Yuan Haowen
Reference-book entry:
“Yüan Hao-wen,” in The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, William H. Nienhauser, Jr., ed. and comp. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), pp. 953-955.
Article:
“Some Chin Dynasty (金代) Issues in Literary Criticism,” Tamkang Review 21.1 (Autumn 1990), pp. 63-73.
Jin dynasty 金代 literary criticism
Translation of poem:
Yüan Hao-wen, “The Moon-Abiding Pavilion,” John Timothy Wixted, tr., in Words in Motion: Modern Japanese Calligraphy, An Exhibition by the Library of Congress and The Yomiuri Shimbun (Library of Congress, 15 June 1984 - 15 September 1984), p. 80. 畱月軒.
Yuan Haowen poem: “Moon-Abiding Pavilion”
Article:
“‘Sincerity’ in Chinese Literary Theory,” Contrastes: Revue de linguistique contrastive (Paris/ Nice) 18-19 (Dec. 1989), pp. 81-87, deals in part with Yuan Haowen, as it focuses on the term cheng 誠 (‘sincerity’). The article is found on the Chinese Literary Criticism – General webpage.
Article (in Chinese):
魏世德 (J.T. Wixted), “Zuijin Xifang xueshujie guanyu Jindai zhi yanjiu” 最近西方学术界关于金代之研究 (Recent Western Scholarship on the Jin Dynasty), Alex Chong Ho Yu 余创豪 (Yu Chuanghao), tr., in Yuan Haowen ji Liao-Jin wenxue yanjiu 元好问及辽金文学研究 (Studies on Yuan Haowen and the Literature of the Liao and Jin Dynasties), Dong Jieying 董杰英 et al., eds. (Beijing: Zhongguo Guoji Guangbo Chubanshe, 1998), pp. 195-211.
Research resource:
Note "Index H" to Japanese Scholars of China: A Bibliographic Handbook (for full citation, see the Japanese Sinology webpage), which lists scholars by field of study (about whom more bibliographic information is supplied in the body of the handbook). Those active in the study of Liao-, Jin-, and Yuan-dynasty history and literature are listed on pp. 419, 444, and 452.