Ping Wang
A new book by University of Washington (UW) professor Ping Wang is bringing fresh attention to one of the most influential poets in Chinese literary history.
Coming in October from UW Press, “The Poetic Way of Xie Lingyun: Literary Expression and the Natural World” is the first full-length study in English in more than 50 years dedicated to Xie Lingyun—a fifth-century writer often called the father of Chinese landscape poetry.
Wang, a professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at UW, explores how Xie and his contemporaries redefined poetry during a time of political upheaval following the fall of the Han dynasty. Drawing on biography, literary analysis, and social history, she traces how exiled aristocrats in southern China used the natural world—mountains and rivers—as a way to reflect on life, exile, and existence.
Wang is also the author of “The Age of Courtly Writing,” a study of early medieval Chinese literature.
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