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Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series)

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Zhongshu Qian (Author)
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Zhongshu Qian (Author), Ronald C. Egan (Translator)
4.5 out of 5 stars 6 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0674534117
ISBN-10: 0674534115
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Product Details

  • Series: Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series (Book 44)
  • Hardcover: 469 pages
  • Publisher: Harvard University Asia Center (May 1, 1998)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0674534115
  • ISBN-13: 978-0674534117
  • Product Dimensions: 1.2 x 6.2 x 9.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #937,863 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsa very "contemporary" book
By Tzu-Hsien Sang tzuhsien@engin.umich.edu on August 23, 1998
Format: Hardcover
I read the Chinese edition of "Limited Views" (there are totally 5 volumes) in a span of 8 years. I only read the introduction and several key pieces of this English selection, but it is enough to convince me that Prof. Ronald Egan is as truthful as possible to the Chinese text. Nevertheless I will focus my review on the Chinese edition. I still remember the excitement and confusion when Qian's masterpiece came into my life. It was a total amazement to see an author being able to cite so many Western books without any effort. As a Taiwanese youth, I learned names of lots of great Western thinkers and their works. But we really didn't have much time and energy to "touch their souls alive", as often being said of reading books. Then a few years later I realized that some of the ancient Chinese books he cited are even harder for common people to find, let alone to read and understand. My friend Shu-I once commented: He is just showing off how many books he has read! But I think Qian has a plan behind this massive work. Qian proposed an altervative to the commonly-accpeted and yet futile way in which we tend to divide the whole human experience into categories like "European" or "Asian traditions" and to study them "comparatively." He showed us, mainly through the window of literature, that by studying, understanding and appreciating every bits of fragments of human thoughts, a far more enjoyable approach is at our grasp. For this aspect, he poses a striking similarity with the deconstructionists so fashionable now in acdemics. Yet he is so different from them too.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsread it
By A Customer on January 22, 1999
Format: Hardcover
Like the previous reviewer, I'm only familiar with the original version of this work, which is something like 2000 pps, written in a classical Chinese utterly incomprehensible to your ordinary Chinese college graduate. Qian carried out what Benjamin, dying young, failed to complete, a book not written, but quoted. That is, at least 90% of this immense book is made up of quotes, in Latin, Italian, German, French, English, and of course Chinese. This sort of undertaking requres imagination as well as learning, not to say a real appetite for reading practically anything. By the way, Qian wrote one of the few good Chinese novels of this century, and pretty good traditional verse.
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4.0 out of 5 starsdiscovering qian
By A Customer on March 24, 1998
Format: Hardcover
it's about time for an english translation of qian's work. even as a selection, this is an extraordinary difficult task, as the work is written in classical chinese prose, for all practical purposes a dead language, as dead as latin or greek, but for those who can still read it a truly wonderful medium, especially under the control of a modern master like qian. his original 4-volume work, though enormously famous in china, can hardly be understood by most chinese readers, distant as they are to their own tradition and language. so english readers should consider themselves lucky... now the question is--what exactly does qian write about? well, his work can more appropriately be called as a traditional commentary to the entire canon of chinese classics. but qian draws on his immense knowledge of the western tradition, in criticism, philosophy, poetry, novel, aesthetics, psychology, linguistics, history, etc. his footnotes appear in latin, english, french, german, italian, and of course chinese, with references from leibniz to freud, from cicero to william james, and from dante to nietzsche. this is a work of vast ambitions. qian is determined to produce something in the manner of benjamin's arcade project. we should remember that even benjamin did not quite succeed, for reasons other than his early death. and it is perhaps too early to judge qian's attempt. but in any case this is a book worth wrestling with, difficult as it may be to readers not entirely at home with 2 vast intellectual traditions (i.e. most of us). but qian's deep learning, utter humility, and sublime wit should pose a sharp contrast to certain french theorists fashionable in american colleges these days.
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