Three Kingdoms and Chinese Culture

Kimberly Besio is Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at Colby College. Constantine Tung is Associate Professor Emeritus of Chinese Language and Literature at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York and the coeditor (with Colin Mackerras) of Drama in the People's Republic of China, also published by SUNY Press.

• Foreword: The Language of Values in the Ming Novel Three KingdomsMoss RobertsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionKimberly Besio and Constantine TungPart I Three Kingdoms and Chinese Values1. Cosmic Foreordination and Human Commitment: The Tragic Volition in Three KingdomsConstantine Tung2. Essential Regrets: The Structure of Tragic Consciousnessin in Three KingdomsDominic Cheung3. The Notion of Appropriateness (Yi) in Three KingdomsJiyuan YuPart II Three Kingdoms and Chinese History4. The Beginning of the End: The Fall of the Han and the Opening of Three KingdomsGeorge A. Hayden5. Selected Historical Sources for Three Kingdoms: Reflections from Sima Guang’s and Chen Liang’s Reconstructions of Kongming’s StoryHoyt Cleveland TillmanPart III Three Kingdoms in Chinese Drama and Art6. Zhuge Liang and Zhang Fei: Bowang shao tun and Competing Masculine Ideals within the Development of the Three Kingdoms Story CycleKimberly Besio7. The Theme of Three Kingdoms in Chinese Popular Woodblock PrintsCatherine Pagani8. Three Kingdoms at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century: The Shanghai Jingju Company’s Cao Cao and Yang XiuElizabeth Wichmann-WalczakPart IV Three Kingdoms in Contemporary East Asia9. From Three Kingdoms the Novel to Three Kingdoms the Television Series: Gains, Losses, and ImplicationsJunhao Hong10. The Reception and Place of Three Kingdoms in South KoreaJinhee Kim11. Studies of Three Kingdoms in the New CenturyBojun ShenTranslated by Kimberly BesioBibliographyList of ContributorsIndex

"…the editors have done a good service with a well-edited volume, for which they should be congratulated." — Journal of Asian Studies"…Three Kingdoms and Chinese Culture succeeds in living up to the promise of its title. The reader is given a wonderfully rich volume on the dramatic conflicts within the novel, its relationship with preceding historiography, its cultural manifestations in art, drama and performance arts in imperial times, and its fresh recreations in modern-day television drama, software games, and multimedia in China and East Asia. This book will be of great interest to anyone who wants to understand why modern Chinese venerate their ancient culture and how traditional values are interpreted and reinvented in contemporary contexts." — Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies"Three Kingdoms is one of the greatest novels in all Chinese literature. This volume addresses it from historical, philosophical, literary, theatrical, military tactical, and popular cultural perspectives and is a significant and useful companion to Moss Roberts' English translation of the novel." — Jan W. Walls, coeditor and cotranslator of Classical Chinese Myths