Book Review--Chinese Aesthetics and Literature: A Reader

Traditional Chinese paintings often represent the trope of the wisdom-bound journey as a sinuous path towards the uprising horizon amid mist-shrouded mountains and rivers. For newcomers this book may act as a compass for a first journey into the intricate Chinese artistic landscape. Corinne Dale avows she assembled the collection“for nonspecialist Westerners who seek to learn about Chinese culture, especially about the ways in which art and particularly literature express that culture”(p. x). Accordingly, the merits of her book will be evaluated with novice readers in mind: Will her collection reward readers with insightful views or disorient them in the heights of academia? Given this, the essays selected will not be primarily analyzed for the worth of their scholarly content except as this may be germane to their fitness for inclusion in a collection for beginners. Before taking one more step, it should be noted that an edited collection such as this was past due. Capably sorting through the vast literature that would be daunting terrain for newcomers, it opportunely fills a gap between popular books on Chinese culture that move on superficial plains and their scholarly counterparts that discourse in deep rifts fit for experts alone. Below follows an overview of the features of this volume, a thematic and sequential presentation of chapters and authors, and a critical assessment with suggestions for improvements.