"With commentary and annotaions throughout, Ming Dynasty Tales: A Guided Reader presents for the first time in English 10 key stories from China's Ming Dynasty era. Casting new light on this significant period in Chinese literary history, these tales bring Ming era China vividly to life, from its chaotic beginnings to its imperial heyday. As well as bearing witness to social change across the 100-year life of the Ming Dynasty from 1260 to 1368, these tales tackle key themes of war and peace and Confucian values of loyalty, filiality, chastity, and righteousness"--

Introduction Victor H. Mair and Zhenjun Zhang
1.Qu You, "The Golden Phoenix Hairpin" (Translated by Paul W. Kroll)
2.Qu You, "The Tale of Cuicui" (Translated by Zhenjun Zhang and Sidney Sondergard)
3.Qu You, "The Account of the Legal Administrator of the Grand Void" (Translated by Kelsey Seymour)
4.Qu You, "The Tale of the Lady in Green" (Translated by Yunwen Gao)
5.Li Changqi, "The Record of a Phoenix-Tail Fern" (Translated by Qian Liu and Joanne Tsao)
6.Li Changqi, "The Record of the Lotus Screen" (Translated by Weiguo Cao)
7.Li Changqi, "The Tale of the Swing-play Gathering" (Translated by Jing Wang)
8.Shao Jingzhan, "The Tale of Young Master Yao" (Translated by Chen Wu)
9.Song Maocheng , "The Faithless Lover" (Translated by Zhenjun Zhang)
10. Song Maocheng, "The Pearl Shirt" (Translated by Jing Hu)
Notes on the Editors and Contributors
Selected Bibliography
Index

Victor H. Mair is Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.
Zhenjun Zhang is of Professor Asian Studies and Modern Languages at St. Lawrence University, USA. He is the co-editor of Ming Dynasty Tales: A Guided Reader (Bloomsbury, 2022).