A Classical Chinese Reader: The Han Shu biography of Huo Guang by Donald B. Wagner (PDF)

Description

Designed as an advanced/intermediate level textbook for students, this book will meet the needs of those making the transition between ‘textbook texts’ to ‘real texts’. Dr Wagner’s many years’ experience of teaching classical Chinese are brought to bear on one of the most difficult aspects of learning the language – making the progression from introductory textbooks on classical Chinese, which do not present serious philological problems, to real historical texts, in which such problems abound. The text used is the biography of Huo Guang in the Han Shu together with the commentaries compiled by Yan Shigu.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐After completing Yuan’s “Classical Chinese: A Basic Reader”, Rouzer’s “New Primer of Literary Chinese” and Barnes’ “Chinese Through Poetry” and browsing through the other existing textbooks in a library, I felt that English-based textbooks didn’t really have much more to offer, and yet getting to real texts still represented a daunting step forward, a step that I was clearly not ready to take.That is where the present book comes: at its core, the biography of Huo Guang, a politician from the 1st century BC, as recounted in the Book of Han. After a necessary introduction presenting how to approach the text, references and cultural background, the book is split in three parts:-a lexicon: if ever you only have a character dictionary, as I had at the time, you need to know that Classical Chinese is absolutely not monosyllabic – as opposed to what is often said – and having access only to character definitions will leave you completely clueless in far too many situations to make reading enjoyable. Fortunately, the lexicon addresses this problem, almost all of the words being covered, with additional explanations when necessary. If you have access to better dictionaries on the other hand (古汉语大词典 is available in the Pleco app for ~$50, will save you hours of page-flipping), try to use the lexicon only as a last resort, because this is what you will have to do when you get to real texts!-the text as printed in modern editions, with a commentary: in columns, the main text being printed in larger, bold characters, and the commentary is inserted in between. This is the format in which you will find almost any classical work in a book shop, once you get to that stage.-the text in woodblock print: this is for those who want an extra challenge. This is the way books were printed before the modern era. The absence of punctuation is what makes it challenging, since you will have to figure out yourself where sentences and clauses end. It may be good to get to this part once you’ve worked your way through the “modern print” version once.This book will require serious work, probably over a couple of months, but the effort really pays off: after finishing it, I went through an entire 500+page book (说苑). Not without a lot of pain, of course, but still I could do it: it would probably never have happened if I hadn’t had access to such a “helping step” in my study of Classical Chinese. I would recommend it to anyone who really wants to read classics of China.

⭐Not found.

Keywords

Free Download A Classical Chinese Reader: The Han Shu biography of Huo Guang in PDF format
A Classical Chinese Reader: The Han Shu biography of Huo Guang PDF Free Download
Download A Classical Chinese Reader: The Han Shu biography of Huo Guang PDF Free
A Classical Chinese Reader: The Han Shu biography of Huo Guang PDF Free Download
Download A Classical Chinese Reader: The Han Shu biography of Huo Guang PDF
Free Download Ebook A Classical Chinese Reader: The Han Shu biography of Huo Guang