Interview with Professor Richard John Lynn

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Notes

1 Interview conducted for the UCLA Library Center for Oral History Research. There is an earlier interview conducted by Shi Guang: “I’m an old-fashioned Chinese-style scholar who writes in English.”

2 Wen Fong 方聞 (b. Shanghai, 1930–2018) was an influential Chinese art historian, publishing some fifteen studies including Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, 8th–14th Century and Possessing the Past: Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei. He was Professor of Art History at Princeton University and as the first consultative chairman of the Department of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1971–2000).

3 Max Loehr (1903–1988), educated in Germany (PhD from Ludwig-Maxilians Universität in Munich in 1936) was professor of art history at Harvard and concurrently Curator of the Fogg Museum (1966–1974). His publications include Ritual Vessels of Bronze Age China and The Great Painters of China.

4 Frederick Mote (1922–2005) was faculty at Princeton University from 1956 to 1987, and he was one of the guiding forces responsible for bringing East Asian and Chinese studies into maturity in the United States. Among his works were The Poet Kao Ch'i, 1336–1374 and Imperial China, 900-1800. He also helped plan the Cambridge History of China and edited with Dennis Twitchett the Cambridge History of China, Volume 7, The Ming Dynasty: 1368-1644.

5 K.C. Hsiao (蕭公權, 1897–1981) came to the United States on Boxer Indemnity and earned his PhD at Cornell University (1926). After extended periods in China, he taught at the University of Washington (1949–1968). His most important work was Zhongguo zhengzhi sixiangshi 中國政治思想史 (“History of Chinese Political Thought”). Chongqing. Frederick Mote translated the first volume as History of Chinese Political Thought, Volume 1: From the Beginning to the Sixth Century AD.

6 George E. Taylor (1905–2000) was an Englishman, who studied at John Hopkins, Harvard and Peking, teaching at Yenching University in Peking and then serving as professor at University of Washington (1939–1969). He promoted the importance of social scientists in guiding (or offering guidance) on matters of political policy and was strongly against recognizing the People’s Republic and later strongly in favor of supporting allies in Vietnam. He published with Franz H. Michael, The Far East in the Modern World.

7 Helmut Wilhelm (1905–1990), son of the Sinologist Richard Wilhelm (1873–1930), grew up in China, did his Ph.D. at the University of Berlin on the Ming scholar Gu Yanwu (1613–1682), compiled the standard German-Chinese dictionary and published an influential work on the Yijing (Change: Eight Lectures on the I-Ching).

8 Leon Hurvitz (1923–1992), a polymath whose research focused on Buddhism. He taught at Washington (1958–1971) and the University of British Columbia (1971–1988). His works include Chih-I (538-597). an Introduction to the Life and Ideas of a Chinese Buddhist Monk (1963) and his translation of the Lotus Sutra: Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma (1976). Sonja Arntzen, an expert on Japanese medieval literature (and Richard Lynn’s wife) wrote an appreciation of his life: Appreciation of Leon Hurvitz.

9 Nicholas Poppe (1897–1991) was born in Yantai, Shandong, where his father was a Russian consular office. Graduated from the Mongolian department at Petrograd University (1921), he taught at the University of Leningrad and then as Head of the Department of Mongolian Studies in the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. During World War II, he was in occupied territory and was able to leave the Soviet Union when the Germans withdrew. In 1949, he came to the United States and the University of Washington where he taught until 1968. A prolific scholar of Altaic literature and linguistics, he is credited with some 284 books and articles and 200+ book reviews in his career written in English, German, Mongolian and Russian. Several of his books can be found here: https://altaica.ru/personalia/e_poppe.php.

10 David Knechtges (b. 1942), taught at University of Washington (1972–2012). His major work is a multi-volume translation of the Wen Xuan (Refined Literature). He also edited The History of Chinese Civilizations. 4 volumes.

11 John King Fairbank (1907–1991), who taught at Harvard from 1936–1991, was the pre-eminent American historian of late imperial China after World War II. His works include The United States and China and China: A New History. In addition, together with Dennis Twitchett, he planned the Cambridge History of China series.

12 James J.Y. Liu (劉若愚, 1926–1986) taught at Stanford University (1967–1986). He published on Chinese poetry and theory. His titles include: The Art of Chinese Poetry; Chinese Theories of Literature; The Chinese Knight-Errant, The Interlingual Critic: Interpreting Chinese Poetry and Major Lyricists of the Northern Sung: 960–1126 A.D.

13 Wayne Booth (1921–2005) wrote the highly influential The Rhetoric of Fiction.

14 Elder Olson (1909–1992), poet and academic, is best-known for The Poetry of Dylan Thomas (1954).

15 Jerome Taylor (1918–1996) was a scholar of medieval English drama and poetry.

16 Richard McKeon (1900–1985) was a philosopher whose work on philosophy served as a touchstone for the scholars of the Chicago school, collectively and individually.

17 David Shepherd Nivison (1923–2014) published on various periods of Chinese history and philosophy. His titles include The Life and Thought of Chang Hsüeh-ch'eng; The Ways of Confucianism: Investigations in Chinese Philosophy; and Key to the Chronology of the Three Dynasties: The “Modern Text” Bamboo Annals.

18 Patrick Hanan (1927–2014) whose work on Chinese literature include Falling in Love: Stories from the Ming, The Chinese Short Story, and The Invention of Li Yu.

19 John C.Y. Wang (1934–2018), an expert on late imperial Chinese literature, publications include Chin Sheng-t’an, chapters in How to Read Chinese Novels, and Chinese Narrative: Critical and Theoretical Essays.

20 M.H. Abrams (1912–2015) published The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (1953) and edited The Norton Anthology of English Literature.

21 W.W. Skinner (1925–2008) was an influential anthropologist. Among his works are The City in Late Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977 and Rural China on the Eve of Revolution.

22 Wesley Trimpi (1928–2014) was a poet and scholar of English literature whose publications include Ben Jonson’s Poems: A Study of the Plain Style and Muses of One Mind: The Literary Analysis of Experience and Its Continuity.

23 Ronald Miao (繆文傑) is an expert on medieval Chinese poetry and poetics. His best known work is Early Medieval Chinese Poetry: The Life and Verse of Wang Tsʻan (A.D. 177–217).

24 John Hay (b. 1939) and Jonathan Hay (b. 1956) are both Chinese art historians. Both have taught at New York University and have also published articles in the same collected volume. (Boundaries, edited by Jonathan Hay).

25 Ch’ü Wan-li (Qu Wanli 屈萬里 1907–1979) was a prominent Taiwan scholar on various fields of Chinese studies. He also catalogued most Ming works in the Gest Collection at Princeton University, which is available as volume 13 of the Qu Wanli quanji.

26 Jao Tsung-I 饒宗頤 (Rao Zongyi) (1917–2018) sinologist who published some 100 books and 1000 articles in a multitude of fields. He was also a painter, poet and calligrapher. See Chen Zhi and Adam Schwartz, Jao Tsung-I (Rao Zongyi) 饒宗頤 (1917–2018) for brief introduction to his work.

27 Albert Dien 丁愛博 (b. 1927) is a medieval Chinese historian whose works include Six Dynasties Civilization and co-edited with Keith Knapp, Cambridge History of China: Volume 2: The Six Dynasties 220-589.

28 Hiraoka Takeo’s 平岡武夫 (1909–1995) Todai kenkyui no Shiori 唐代研究のしおり(Tang Reference series) includes ten titles in sixteen volumes.

29 Wilt Idema (b. 1944), an expert on Chinese drama, has translated vast scores of dramatic literature. His works include The Red Brush: Writing Women of Imperial China (with Beata Grant and Chinese Theater, 1100-1450: A Source Book (with Stephen West).

30 Jonathan Chaves (b. 1943) writes on and translates late imperial poetry. Notable titles on Ming figures are Pilgrim of the Clouds: Poems and Essays from Ming-Dynasty China by Yüan Hung-tao and His Brothers and The Columbia Book of Later Chinese Poetry: Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties (1279–1911).

31 Gary Snyder (b. 1930) is an important modern American poet, connected to the Beatnik movement. He spent many years in Kyoto, studying Japanese and Chinese poetry and it has left a mark upon his own writing.

32 The Japanese yen became a free-floating currency in 1973.

33 Donald Holzman (1926–2019) worked at Institut des hautes études chinoises and Centre d’études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine was an expert in medieval Chinese literature, particularly its poetry. His studies include Poetry and Politics: The Life and Works of Juan Chi (A.D. 210-263) and Immortals, Festivals, and Poetry in Medieval China: Studies in Social and Intellectual History.

34 Marie Holzman (b. 1952) is a Professor of Chinese who writes about contemporary China.

35 Margaret Tudor South (1926–2016) taught Chinese at Auckland University, where she was Head of the Department upon Douglass Lancashire’s retirement and on-and-off over the years after. She wrote on the Tang poet Li He.

36 Albert Richard (Bertie) Davis (1924–1983) was Chair of Oriental Studies at the University of Sydney and a major figure in Australian sinology. His publications include T‘ao Yūan-ming (A.D. 365–427): his works and their meaning. An annual A.R. Davis Memorial Lecture was established in 1985 at the University of Sydney.

37 Douglas Lancashire, born in Tianjin (b 1926), became a scholar of late imperial China, publishing on authors such as Li Boyuan (李伯元; 1867–1906) as well as maintaining an interest in Chinese responses to Christianity. He was Professor of Chinese and Head of the Department of Asian Languages & Literatures, University of Auckland, New Zealand (1966–1981), and then served as a rector in the Church of England for a decade (1981–1991). He was active in scholarship until the early 2000s.

38 Guan Yunshi was a Yuan dynasty poet. Richard Lynn’s study of his life and times in Kuan Yün Shih was the first in a Western language. A greatly revised and expanded version will be published as From the Studio of Sour Mood: Poetry and Prose of Guan Yunshi (1286–1324) by Quirin Press in 2024.

39 Hugh Moss (b. 1943), the son of Chinese art dealer Sydney Leonard Moss (1893–1980), is an art dealer, author, expert on Chinese snuff bottles and soapstones, and a painter.

40 Zheng Zhenduo (鄭振鐸 1898–1958) was an influential academic, cultural figure and scholar. He took part in forming the Literary Study Society, edited Fiction Monthly and other literary organizations, and became head of the Cultural Relic Bureau and Director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He also published numerous works, of which 《插圖本中國文學史》 (Cha tu ben Zhongguo wen xue shi) (Illustrated History of Chinese Literature) is noted in the interview.

41 The Gest Collection is one of the premier collection of Chinese (and East Asian) books in the world. As Professor Lynn notes it is the largest collection of shanban outside of China. For a brief history, see Martin Hejdra, “The East Asia Library and the Gest Collection at Princeton University”.

42 Yan Yu (顏羽, ca. 1180 — ca. 1235; courtesy name: Canglang), “Canglang shihua” 滄浪詩話 (The Poetry Talks of Master Canglang) became an influential text in the Ming dynasty. See Lynn’s articles “Yan Yu’s Canglang shihua and the Chan — Poetry Analogy” and “The Talent Learning Polarity in Chinese Poetics: Yan Yu and the Later Tradition.”

43 Edward Shaughnessy (b. 1952) is a contemporary historian who works at the University of Chicago. He has published numerous volumes on the Zhou dynasty, both in Chinese and in English. Titles include Before Confucius: Studies in the Creation of the Chinese Classics and Unearthing the Changes: Newly Unearthed Manuscripts of the Yijing and Related Texts.

44 Chang Woei Ong 王昌偉, Li Mengyang, the North-South Divide, and Literati Learning in Ming China.

45 Daniel Bryant (1942–2014), The Great Recreation: Ho Ching-ming (1483–1521) and His World. Richard Lynn also contributed “Daniel Bryant (1942–2014) Professor Emeritus of Chinese Studies, University of Victoria Reminiscence and Bibliography” in this journal.

46 Wang Shizhen (王士禎, 1634–1711), the subject of Richard Lynn’s dissertation, shares the same transliteration as the important literatus Wang Shizhen (王世貞, 1526–1590). As the former lived during the Qing dynasty and the latter, the Ming dynasty, they are often referred with their respective dynasties attached.

47 Siku quanshu (四庫全書 “Complete Library of the Four Treasuries”) was the largest Chinese book collection that had been put together at the time. The Qianlong emperor ordered it started in 1773 and it was completed in 1792. It consisted of 79,337 juan compiled by a board of 361 scholars and involved more than 3800 scribes. See Guy R Kent’s The Emperor’s Four Treasuries.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard Lynn

Richard John Lynn is Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, Department of East Asian Studies. He has published widely in Chinese studies, including the three Mystery Classics with commentary by Guo Xiang or Wang Bi: The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi (1994), The Classic of the Way and Virtue: A New Translation of the Tao-te Ching of Laozi as Interpreted by Wang Bi (1999) and Zhuangzi: A New Translation of the Sayings of Master Zhuang as Interpreted by Guo Xiang (2022). He is currently working on a study of the literary and cultural experiences of Huang Zunxian 黃遵憲 (1848–1905) in Meiji Japan (1877–1882) and a revised book on Guan Yunshi: From the Studio of Sour Mood: Poetry and Prose of Guan Yunshi (1286–1324).