The Butterfly Lovers

“A judiciously chosen selection of the highlights of the famous Liang-Zhu story cycle with a particular focus on earlier and little-known redactions in a multiplicity of genres. Expertly translated with glosses on cultural items, this volume will prove a boon to the English reader with an interest in the riches of Chinese oral and vernacular culture. Scholars and students of Chinese literature and culture will value this volume for the insight it gives into the emergence and development of the story at key points in the tradition. Teachers of Chinese literature, history, and gender studies too will find much to draw inspiration from in the introduction, the translated stories and the background material presented in this book.”
     —CHINOPERL Papers

SKU
26935g

The Legend of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai:
Four Versions with Related Texts

Edited and Translated, with Introduction, by Wilt L. Idema

2010 - 256 pp.

Grouped product items
Format ISBN Price Qty
Cloth (no dust jacket) 978-1-60384-195-5
$44.00
Paper 978-1-60384-194-8
$15.00

eBook available for $13.50. Click HERE for more information.

The late-imperial legend of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, the "Butterfly Lovers"—a story as central to Chinese culture as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is to Western culture—also relates a tale of two lovers help apart by social strictures. To audiences of the many Chinese ballads, plays, and films based on the story, the tragic ending offers proof that equality and happiness can only be achieved in a China freed from the traditional family system.

This volume offers translations of the earliest versions of the popular ballad along with later literary reinventions of the tale; a variety of related documents reveal the historical and cultural origins of the legend. In his Introduction, Wilt L. Idema provides essential contextual information and discusses how the story of the Butterfly Lovers fits into modern Chinese concepts of gender roles and sexual freedom.

 

Reviews:

"Idema's scholarship . . . [and his] ability to translate popular texts into comparably idiomatic English are outstanding achievements."
     —Hugh R. Clark, Ursinus College

“A judiciously chosen selection of the highlights of the famous Liang-Zhu story cycle with a particular focus on earlier and little-known redactions in a multiplicity of genres. Expertly translated with glosses on cultural items, this volume will prove a boon to the English reader with an interest in the riches of Chinese oral and vernacular culture. Scholars and students of Chinese literature and culture will value this volume for the insight it gives into the emergence and development of the story at key points in the tradition. Teachers of Chinese literature, history, and gender studies too will find much to draw inspiration from in the introduction, the translated stories and the background material presented in this book.”
     —CHINOPERL Papers

 

"A significant contribution to our understanding of pre-modern vernacular Chinese literature and the society which it reflects. An informative and insightful study that both specialists and general readers interested in Chinese culture, thanks to accurate and felicitous translations and concise and edifying commentaries, will find a delight to read."
    —Richard John Lynn, University of Toronto, in The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society

 

"These are very readable translations . . . [this] book would serve well as a textbook in Chinese folklore or religion classes as well as a sourcebook for the comparativist who knows little or no Chinese."
     —David Elton Gay, Indiana University, in the Journal of Folklore Research

 

About the Author:

Wilt L. Idema is Professor of Chinese Literature, Harvard University.