Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Letter to Ren An and Sima Qian’s Legacy
    Unavailable
    The Letter to Ren An and Sima Qian’s Legacy
    Unavailable
    The Letter to Ren An and Sima Qian’s Legacy
    Ebook314 pages7 hours

    The Letter to Ren An and Sima Qian’s Legacy

    By Stephen Durrant, Wai-yee Li, Michael Nylan and Hans van Ess

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Sima Qian (first century BCE), the author of Record of the Historian (Shiji), is China’s earliest and best-known historian, and his “Letter to Ren An” is the most famous letter in Chinese history. In the letter, Sima Qian explains his decision to finish his life’s work, the first comprehensive history of China, instead of honorably committing suicide following his castration for “deceiving the emperor.” In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, some scholars have queried the authenticity of the letter. Is it a genuine piece of writing by Sima Qian or an early work of literary impersonation? The Letter to Ren An and Sima Qian’s Legacy provides a full translation of the letter and uses different methods to explore issues in textual history. It also shows how ideas about friendship, loyalty, factionalism, and authorship encoded in the letter have far-reaching implications for the study of China.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Washington Press
    Release dateApr 1, 2016
    ISBN9780295806389
    Unavailable
    The Letter to Ren An and Sima Qian’s Legacy

    Related to The Letter to Ren An and Sima Qian’s Legacy

    Related ebooks

    Asian History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Chinese Rhymes

      Mar 28, 2018

      Everybody who cares anything for old poetry in English knows how it feels—knows how awful it feels—when a poem is rhyming away and then suddenly the rhyme goes off the rails for a second because English pronunciation has changed since the time the po

      6 min read

    • Article

      So What If Lincoln Was Gay?

      Apr 16, 2019

      So What If Lincoln Was Gay?
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Voices Of CHINA

      Oct 29, 2020

      The Voices Of CHINA
      6 min read

    • Article

      Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency

      Jul 14, 2017

      I read non-fiction books that I thought might indirectly tell me something about fiction, even though they were really about something else. The post Five Non-Fiction Books for Writers in an Emergency appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Kanishk Tharoor on Writing Outside of Western Traditions

      Mar 16, 2017

      For years I knew Kanishk Tharoor primarily as the author of thoughtful essays about history, in the broadest sense: not just what happened in the past but also how humans have explored the past, made sense of the past, contested the past. So when I s

      6 min read

    • Article

      Dear Someone: On Asian-American Writers and Letters as Storytelling

      Nov 13, 2019

      Historically, the Asian-American story has been ignored, erased, overlooked. At its simplest, a Dear Someone letter demands to be read. The post Dear Someone: On Asian-American Writers and Letters as Storytelling appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Private Devotion

      Sep 1, 2018

      Greetings from Angelus by Gershom Scholem (translated by Richard Sieburth). Archipelago Books, 2018, $14.00 paper. IN 1648—the year, according to the Zohar, destined to usher in the messianic era—a Smyrnan Jew by the name of Shabbatai Tzvi received

      5 min read

    • Article

      Writing Is Thinking: Martha Anne Toll in Conversation with Ed Simon

      Jul 28, 2021

      Writers write, that's what we do—that's what we need to do. Writing is how I organize my experience and make sense of the world; in some ways writing is itself synonymous with thinking for me. The post Writing Is Thinking: Martha Anne Toll in Convers

      9 min read

    • Article

      Q&A Ben Kane

      May 14, 2020

      Ben Kane is one of Britain's best-selling historical fiction writers. The majority of his novels are focused on the Romans, and his research has even included walking along Hadrian’s wall in full Roman military gear. Ben has sold over one million cop

      2 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On…

      Oct 29, 2020

      We are often told that the majority of history searches in archives, libraries and record offices, both in person and online, concern family history and genealogy. We all want to know about ourselves: where are we from? Who do we think we are? This f

      3 min read

    • Article

      Samuel Pepys Would Have Been Huge on the Internet

      May 29, 2019

      Pepys’s fragmentary, digressive, contradictory, messy diary foreshadows our own individual self-fashioning. In Pepys we see Facebook; we see Twitter. The post Samuel Pepys Would Have Been Huge on the Internet appeared first on The Millions.

      13 min read

    • Article

      Book Reviews

      Mar 15, 2024

      By Edward L. Shaughnessy ISBN: 978-1350170377 Bloomsbury Publishing (2023) - £28.99 www.bloomsbury.com While a huge amount of literature exists on ancient China, from studies based on traditional histories to specific texts and archaeological discove

      6 min read

    • Article

      Books & co

      May 8, 2020

      Histories, novels, memoires & more The Psychology of Searching By Penny Walters Bringing a whole new perspective to family history, The Psychology of Searching invites us to examine why we pursue family history, what it is that sparks our curiosity a

      5 min read

    • Article

      On Literature and Consciousness

      Feb 18, 2021

      This is the greatest opening line in imaginative literature, because it’s the first one ever written. How can the invention of fiction itself be topped? The post On Literature and Consciousness appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Jeff Chang

      Dec 11, 2017

      This past year, I spent a huge portion of my non-work-related waking hours immersed in the national output of nonfiction books. Instead of reading for writing projects, as was my annual routine for many years, I was reading to determine a winner. But

      3 min read

    • Article

      Crowing Glory

      Mar 12, 2020

      Crowing Glory
      3 min read

    Reviews for The Letter to Ren An and Sima Qian’s Legacy

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words