Book cover for Idle Talk: Volume 6 by Jack W Chen and David Schaberg

Idle Talk

Volume 6

Jack W Chen
David Schaberg
2013 Released
258 Pages
4-6 Hours
Ebook Unavailable
Audiobook Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
University of California PressISBN 9780520289772
Gossip and anecdote may be "idle talk," but they also serve to knit together individuals in society and to provide the materials through which literary culture and historical memory are constructed. This groundbreaking book provides a cultural history of gossip and anecdote in traditional China, beginning with the Han dynasty and ending with the Qing. The ten essays, along with the introduction and postface, address the verification, transmission, and interpretation of gossip and anecdote across literary and historical genres.

Contributors: Sarah M. Allen, Beverly J. Bossler, Jack W. Chen, Ronald Egan, Dore J. Levy, Stephen Owen, Graham Sanders, David Schaberg, Anna M. Shields, Richard E. Strassberg, Xiaofei Tian

David Schaberg

David Schaberg is professor of Asian languages and culture at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography (Harvard, 2002); and cotranslator of Zuo Traditions / Zuozhuan 左傳 (UWP, 2017) and The Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan Reader: Selections from China's Earliest Narrative History (UWP, 2020).

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