The Late-Ming Poet Ch'En Tzu-Lung: Crises of Love and Loyalism

by Kang-i Sun Chang

Ch'en Tzu-lung (1608-1647) was a Ming loyalist and poet who joined the resistance against the Manchu invasion of the 1640's and died a martyr to the cause. Giving imaginative expression to his experience of national crisis, his poetic writing established him in China as an exemplar of moral courage and literary accomplishment. A consequence of his heroic status is that a crucial concern of his poetry, namely, romantic love, has been largely neglected by scholars. This Kang-i Sun Chang focuses on Ch'en's poetry and establishes a connection between his love poetry and his loyalist writings. Chang argues that an appreciation of his love poetry is vital to a full understanding of the more celebrated loyalist poems, and demonstrates the broader implications for poetic genre in this era. She also discusses Ch'en's lover, the captivating and accomplished woman poet Liu Shih, shedding light onto the life of 17th century Chinese women. The book includes numerous translations of poems by

206 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1991

About the author

Kang-i Sun Chang (born 1944), née Sun Kang-i (Chinese: 孫康宜; pinyin: Sūn Kāngyí), is a Chinese-American scholar of classical Chinese literature. She is the inaugural Malcolm G. Chace Professor, and former chairperson of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University.

(from Wikipedia)