Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry
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Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry is an anthology of around 1,000 Chinese poems translated into English, edited by Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo (traditional Chinese: 羅郁正; simplified Chinese: 罗郁正; pinyin: Luó Yùzhèng; Wade–Giles: Lo Yü-cheng[1]) and published in 1975 by Anchor Press/Doubleday.[2] Wu-chi Liu served as the anthology's senior editor. As of 2002, the book had been widely used in Asian literature studies. In 2002 Stacy Finz of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the book "was a best-seller".[3]
Sinologists edited and translated the work, and according to Burton Raffel, reviewer for Books Abroad, the intended audience was for students of Chinese poetry at universities and high schools.[4] Beth Upton, a book reviewer for the American Oriental Society, wrote that Sunflower Splendor "is obviously aimed at the intelligent amateur as well as the student and specialist."[5]
A companion volume in the Chinese language, also co-edited by Wu-chi Liu and Irving Lo, was published. It is titled K'uei Yeh Chi (Chinese Language edition of Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry) (葵曄集: 歷代詩詞曲選集; 葵晔集: 历代诗词曲选集; Kuíyèjí: lìdài shīcí qǔ xuǎnjí; K'uei-yeh-chi: Li-tai shih tz'u ch'ü hsüan-chi) and was published in 1976 by Indiana University Press.[6] The texts published in the Chinese language anthology do not always coincide with the ones used by the translators of the English anthology.[7]