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The West has seen an upsurge of interest in the traditional Chinese novel in the last thirty years. However, in this thriving field, one of its masterpieces, Sanguo yanyi , or Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel in Moss Roberts's translation (also known as Romance of the Three Kingdoms ), has not received the attention it deserves, in curious contrast to the scholarship lavished on other novels. The volume under review is both an addition to the scholarship on the Chinese novel in general and a notable work in the study of this novel in particular.
This volume, which grew out of the conference "The Historical, Fictional, Theatrical, and Artistic Three Kingdoms: A Sino-American Colloquium," held in Chengdu and Nanchong in 2001, uses a popular, if overtaxed, term, "culture," understandably to accommodate the papers dealing with diverse subjects. The volume opens with a foreword by Moss Roberts, "The Language of Values in the Ming Novel Three Kingdoms ," in which the translator of the masterpiece notes, "Three Kingdoms can be read as a study of values in conflict" (p. vii). This observation sets the tone for many of...