Poet-historian Qian Qianyi

Lawrence C. H. Yim received his Ph.D. from Yale University and is now Associate Research Fellow in the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy at Academia Sinica, and Associate Professor of Chinese Literature, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. He has published articles on Ming-Qing poetry and literary theory and criticism.

• Introduction Part 1: Qian Qianyi’s Theory Of Shishi And Historical Contexts 1. Qian Qianyi’s Theory Of Shishi and Poetics of Ming Loyalism 2. Qian Qianyi’s Reception in Qing Times Part 2: "Renouncing The Pen For The Sword", Three Readings Of Qian Qianyi’s Shishi 3. The Prophesying Poet-Historian 4. The Poet As Mentor and Strategist 5. Loyalty and Love at Parting. Conclusion

'Yim achieves revelation on a level where few can work and where elusive but profound understandings lie. My own view of Qian Qianyi, an unavoidable figure for anyone who studies the seventeenth century in China, has been altered by this book, and my appreciation of poety as an important kind of source material for historians, also, has been heightened. I recommend it to anyone interested in the political and literary history of the Ming-Qing era.' - Lynn A., Struve, Indiana University, Bloomington, Journal of Chinese Studies, 2010"Yim's book is an important and admirable effort in reviving Qian Qianyi's role in the Ming loyalist narrative. Compared to the life Qian Qianyi lived, enjoyed, and achieved, it is a tragedy that he had suffered such posthumous condemnation and prosecution. Yim has put together many significant and under-appreciated sources concerning Qian Qianyi's shishi ideas and the genre of yimin poetry. His argument for Qian Qianyi may be seen as the beginning of a revisionist history of the poetic tradition and its political implications during the Ming-Qing transition." - Hsueh-Yi Lin, Princeton University, Chinese Literature: 32 (2010)