The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons

The first complete theory of literature in China, and one of the great works of criticism in any language. Liu Xie, a young scholar who later became a Buddhist monk, wrote fifty chapters in elegant parallel prose on the origins of writing in the Way and the classics, on every literary genre from poetry and rhapsody to edicts and letters, and on the craft of composition: imagination, style, structure, sound, metaphor, allusion and revision. He judges the writers of a thousand years with wit and authority. This complete new English translation gives all fifty chapters, ending with Liu Xie's own preface on why he wrote, a book for anyone who loves Chinese poetry or wants to know how classical writers thought about their art.