The Romance of the Southern Dynasties
Four dynasties in two hundred years, every one of them taken by a general who
had served the last.
This is the southern half of China's long division, from the end of the Eastern
Jin through the Song, Qi, Liang and Chen, ending in the year the Sui armies
cross the river and the last emperor of Chen is pulled out of a well.
About the Book
Du Gang wrote the northern volume first. A friend read it, told him the picture
was only half drawn, and asked him for the south as well. The result is this
book, and the preface to it survives, printed here with the text.
The narrative begins with the collapse at Jiankang: a court that fled south to
save itself, a drunken emperor smothered in his own bed by a consort who had
been joked about too far, a regent who governs from a wine cup, and out of that
wreck Liu Yu, who founds the Song. Then the pattern sets. Xiao Daocheng takes
the throne from the Song, Xiao Yan takes it from the Qi and rules for half a
century as Emperor Wu of Liang, until the renegade Hou Jing turns on him and
starves the capital. Chen Baxian picks up what is left. Two generations later
the Chen court is writing love songs while the north unites, and the dynasty
ends in a song called Jade Trees and Rear Courtyard Flowers.
Du Gang's defenders had to answer a charge in advance, and they answer it in the
preface: readers said the Southern Dynasties were nothing but powder and
glamour, unfit for a moral book. The reply is that a state's rise and fall are
both visible in exactly those private rooms, and the standard histories record
the same scandals anyway.
About This Edition
This complete English translation presents all thirty two chapters, rendered
directly from the Chinese text.
Both eighteenth century prefaces are translated in full, along with the
chapter end commentary, since it is part of how the book argues. Reign titles,
offices and personal names are handled consistently, and nothing is abridged.
Themes and Legacy
- The Southern Dynasties, roughly 420 to 589, in one continuous narrative
- Liu Yu, Xiao Daocheng, Emperor Wu of Liang, Hou Jing, Chen Baxian
- Usurpation as a recurring machine rather than a single crime
- Court women, palace intrigue and the moral reading of private life
- The companion volume to the same author's Romance of the Northern Dynasties
For Readers Who Love
Romance of the Three Kingdoms - The Romance of the Northern Dynasties -
Chinese Dynastic Histories - Six Dynasties China - World Literature in
Translation
"A state that rises has a reason. A state that falls has one too."
At a glance
About the series
Rediscover the great epics, mysteries and chronicles of dynastic China: gods and generals, swindlers and scholars, courtesans, ghosts and emperors, in complete English translations.
