From Deluge to Discourse

Deborah Lynn Porter is Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages and Literature at the University of Utah.

• Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Contextualizing the Text: The Discovery, Compilation, Transmission, and Traditional Appreciation of the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan 2. See Yü Later: A New Interpretation of Chinese Flood Myths 3. Toward an Aesthetic of Symbol in Early Chinese Thought 4. Symbolic Foundations of the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan:K'un-lun, Ho-tsung, and Hsi-wang-mu 5. The Generation of Symbolism in the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan 6. Heaven's Text and the Invention of Fictional Discourse in China Appendix Notes Bibliography Index

"Not only does this book remedy major shortcomings of previous research on the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan in terms of textual criticism, bibliography, and methodology, it also lays to rest the view of the text as a product of historical composition. This by itself would be a worthwhile contribution to Sinological scholarship. But for the author this is only the starting point for a tour de force of literary and philological analysis of a problematical text in which a remarkable array of evidence is mobilized in establishing that the Mu T'ien-tzu chuan is the linguistic expression of a symbolic operation: 'a tale of a crisis, of its collective transcendence, of the symbols that emanated from it, and of the memory that preserved it.'"— David W. Pankenier, Lehigh University