Comparative Journeys: Essays on Literature and Religion East and West

Anthony C. Yu

November, 2008
Cloth, 432 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-14326-4
$50.00 / £34.50

"A number of scholars have touched on the religious elements of Chinese literature, but none, I think, has done so with Anthony C. Yu's professional mastery of the Western and Chinese canonical traditions paired with a sophisticated literary analysis. At the heart of a number of the essays in this volume is a cogent argument that combines both capacities." — Patrick Hanan, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Chinese Literature, emeritus, Harvard University

"Anthony C. Yu's unique breadth of learning bridges European and Chinese classic texts, ancient and modern writings, and the disciplines of literary and religious studies, making what Yu says about Plato, Aeschylus, Dante, and Milton, alongside Laozi, Xunzi, and Wu Cheng'en, so rich and suggestive." — Andrew Plaks, professor of Chinese, comparative literature, and East Asian studies, Princeton University

"A living contradiction of Kipling's tired saw, Anthony C. Yu bridges the 'twain' of East and West with unsurpassed authority. Comparative Journeys masterfully counters the movement of the sun-and of the Hegelian Spirit. From an opening transhistorical survey of literature and religion worldwide, the book proceeds eastward from two early studies of Milton, through a pivotal consideration of Chinese-Western literary relations, to later essays on such variegated China-based subjects as religious syncretism and the classic epic Xiyouji (Journey to the West), ghosts in Chinese fiction, the political-ethical bearing of the Daodejing, and the relation of Confucianism to human rights. The comparative pieces on Cratylus and Xunzi, the Commedia and the Xiyouji, the problematics of translation, and liberal education in China and the West embody standards to which other East/West comparatists would do well to aspire." — Eric Ziolkowski, Charles A. Dana Professor of Religious Studies, Lafayette College, and North American general editor of Literature and Theology

Related Subjects

• Asian Literature
• Literary Criticism and Theory

About the Author

Anthony C. Yu is Carl Darling Buck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and professor emeritus of religion and literature in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. A native of Hong Kong, He received his doctorate at The University of Chicago and held concurrent faculty appointments in the departments of East Asian languages and civilizations, English, and comparative literature, and on The Committee on Social Thought. Best known for his complete, annotated translation of The Journey to the West, Yu has also published Rereading the Stone: Desire and the Making of Fiction in "Dream of the Red Chamber" and State and Religion in China: Historical and Textual Perspectives. A revised, abridged version of The Journey to the West was published in 2006 as The Monkey and the Monk.

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