This is a powerful account of how the ruin and resurrection of Zhuangzi in modern China's literary history correspond to the rise and fall of modern Chinese individuality. Liu Jianmei highlights two central philosophical themes of Zhuangzi: the absolute spiritual freedom as presented in the chapter of "Free and Easy Wandering" and the rejection of absolute and fixed views on right and wrong as seen in the chapter of "On the Equality of Things." She argues the twentieth century reinterpretation and appropriation of these two important philosophical themes best testify to the dilemma and inner-struggle of modern Chinese intellectuals. In the cultural environment in which Chinese writers and scholars were working, the pursuit of individual freedom as well as the more tolerant and multifaceted cultural mentality has constantly been downplayed, suppressed, or criticized. By addressing a large number of modern Chinese writers, including Guo Moruo, Hu Shi, Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, Lin Yutang, Fei Ming, Liu Xiaofeng, Wang Zengqi, Han Shaogong, Ah Cheng, Yan Lianke, and Gao Xingjian, the author provides an insightful and engaging study of how they have embraced, rejected, and returned to ancient thought and how the spirit of Zhuangzi has illuminated their writing and thinking through the turbulent eras of modern China. This book not only explores modern Chinese writers' complicated relationship with "tradition," but also sheds light on if the freedom of independence, non-participation, and roaming and the more encompassing cultural space inspired by Zhuangzi's spirit were allowed to exist in the modern Chinese literary context. Involving the interplay between philosophy, literature, and history, Liu delineates a neglected literary tradition influenced by Zhuangzi and Daoism and traces its struggles to survive in modern and contemporary Chinese culture.

With over forty original essays, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literatures offers an in-depth engagement with the current analytical methodologies and critical practices that are shaping the field in the twenty-first century. Divided into three sections--Structure, Taxonomy, and Methodology--the volume carefully moves across approaches, genres, and forms to address a rich range topics that include popular culture in Late Qing China, Zhang Guangyu's Journey to the West in Cartoons, writings of Southeast Asian migrants in Taiwan, the Chinese Anglophone Novel, and depictions of HIV/AIDS in Chu T'ien-wen's Notes of a Desolate Man.

Revered for millennia in the Chinese spiritual tradition of the Tao Te Ching, this poetic translation of an ancient Taoist text comes alive for the modern reader Witty, engaging and spiced with the lyricism of poetry, Chuang Tzu's Taoist insights in the Inner Chapters are timely and eternal. The only sustained section of text widely believed to be the work of Chuang Tzu himself, these chapters date to the 4th century B.C.E and are profoundly concerned with spiritual ecology. With bold and startling prose, David Hinton's vital translation is surprisingly modern, making this ancient text from the golden age of Chinese philosophy come alive for contemporary readers. The Inner Chapters' fantastical passages offer up a wild menagerie of characters, freewheeling play with language, and surreal humor. Interwoven with Chuang Tzu's sharp instruction on the Tao are short stories that are often rough and ribald, rich with satire and paradox.

The early Chinese text Master Zhuang (Zhuangzi) is well known for its relativistic philosophy and colorful anecdotes. In the work, Zhuang Zhou ca. 300 B.C.E.) dreams that he is a butterfly and wonders, upon awaking, if he in fact dreamed that he was a butterfly or if the butterfly is now dreaming that it is Zhuang Zhou. The text also recounts Master Zhuang's encounter with a skull, which praises the pleasures of death over the toil of living. This anecdote became popular with Chinese poets of the second and third century C.E. and found renewed significance with the founders of Quanzhen Daoism in the twelfth century. The Quanzhen masters transformed the skull into a skeleton and treated the object as a metonym for death and a symbol of the refusal of enlightenment. Later preachers made further revisions, adding Master Zhuang's resurrection of the skeleton, a series of accusations made by the skeleton against the philosopher, and the enlightenment of the magistrate who judges their case. The legend of the skeleton was widely popular throughout the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and the fiction writer Lu Xun (1881–1936) reimagined it in the modern era. The first book in English to trace the development of the legend and its relationship to centuries of change in Chinese philosophy and culture, The Resurrected Skeleton translates and contextualizes the story's major adaptations and draws parallels with the Muslim legend of Jesus's encounter with a skull and the European tradition of the Dance of Death. Translated works include versions of the legend in the form of popular ballads and plays, together with Lu Xun's short story of the 1930s, underlining the continuity between traditional and modern Chinese culture.

This volume is a translation of over two-thirds of the classic Daoist text Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu), including the complete Inner Chapters and extensive selections from the Outer and Miscellaneous Chapters, plus judicious selections from 2000 years of traditional Chinese commentaries, which provide the reader access to the text as well as to its reception and interpretation. Brief biographies of the commentators, a bibliography, a glossary, and an index are also included.

Explores the cosmological and metaphysical thought in the Zhuangzi from the perspective of nothingness. Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness offers a radical rereading of the Daoist classic Zhuangzi by bringing to light the role of nothingness in grounding the cosmological and metaphysical aspects of its thought. Through a careful analysis of the text and its appended commentaries, David Chai reveals not only how nothingness physically enriches the myriad things of the world, but also why the Zhuangzi prefers nothingness over being as a means to expound the authentic way of Dao. Chai weaves together Dao, nothingness, and being in order to reassess the nature and significance of Daoist philosophy, both within its own historical milieu and for modern readers interested in applying the principles of Daoism to their own lived experiences. Chai concludes that nothingness is neither a nihilistic force nor an existential threat; instead, it is a vital component of Dao’s creative power and the life-praxis of the sage. “Chai provides an elaborate philosophical meontological interpretation of the ontology/cosmology found in the Zhuangzi and the implications for existential practice. It’s a close, careful, but in many respects quite original reading of the classic that contributes significantly to the field of philosophical Daoist studies.” — Geir Sigurðsson, author of Confucian Propriety and Ritual Learning: A Philosophical Interpretation

Free renderings of selections from the works of Chuang-tzŭ, taken from various translations.