A Guide to English Language Sources on the Three Kingdoms

[Sun Fin]

It seems you are determined to give me a stack of work to edit in to my original post!

But thanks, you are uncovering so much information, I also had no idea that so many English sources when I started to compile them!

[waywardauthor]

:lol:

It seems you are determined to give me a stack of work to edit in to my original post!

But thanks, you are uncovering so much information, I also had no idea that so many English sources when I started to compile them!

Sorry to do that to you Fin, but once I started I just couldn't stop!

There shouldn't be too much more out there in the world, and a lot of it skews towards the end of the period and the early Jin period in general terms. Philosophy and poetry take far greater emphasis in the journals than war and individual characters. Wei seems to occupy the prized spot, Rafe dominates the Wu material, and there are only a handful of articles on Shu - and none on Liu Bei.

[waywardauthor]

Dynamics of Disintegration: The Later Han Empire (25-220CE) & Its Northwestern Frontier
WAI KIT WICKY TSE University of Pennsylvania, wtse0709@gmail.com
[PhD Dissertation Piece]

It does not really focus on our period, but it adds a bit of layered context. Furthermore, he's working with resources in China directly through their experts, so there is a different perspective to the material. Rafe gets mentioned 27 times in the text, and it looks thoroughly researched. Not sure how authoritative I would call it, I will need to finish reading it first, but I would give it a look if you want more direct context for the Three Kingdoms, even if he stops shy of bringing us there.

[Jordan]

Does anybody have access to Killigrew's article on the conquest of Wu? I can access his articles on Zhuge Liang's Northern Campaigns and Wei's conquest of Shu-Han but my school database doesn't have the Wu article anywhere.

[waywardauthor]

Does anybody have access to Killigrew's article on the conquest of Wu? I can access his articles on Zhuge Liang's Northern Campaigns and Wei's conquest of Shu-Han but my school database doesn't have the Wu article anywhere.

I wish I could help on this point, but I don't have access to most of Killigrew's stuff. In fact, I just have one + his reviews of some articles.

Wei-Jin Sacrificial Ballets: Reform versus Conservation by Kevin A. Jensen is a thesis on the music and context of music that starts in our era, and moves out to just beyond the Jin.

[Civic]

Thank you Sun Fin, I've been wanting to find a collection of books covering Later Han/Three Kingdoms era, but the information tends to be scarce.

[waywardauthor]

In my quest to learn more on Tao Qian, I have uncovered some additional sources of information.

Two years ago there was an article published in Monumenta Serica that deals with how Cao Cao's historical evaluation changed during the Song Dynasty by Anne McLaron. I do not have access to it, but it may be a good read if you have access to the journal.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1 ... 2.60.1.003

Shi Xianglin published a dissertation piece at the University of Washington that focused on the last three decades of the Later Han Period with respect to Jian'An poetry. It is free to read, and is just about book length.

https://digital.lib.washington.edu/rese ... 1773/23343

Hyung-Jong Lee published a much shorter piece in support of his dissertation at the University of Washington in Saint Louis. This one is on the role of Sun Quan and his role in historiography from Sanguozhi to Sanguoyanyi. Also free for reading.

http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/vi ... ontext=etd

Last, but not least, there is an attempt to showcase the Three Kingdoms from the perspective of Shu and Wu published in the December 2016 edition of the American Oriental Society. I do not know how good it is, as I do not have access to it.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7817/jam ... b_contents

[Sun Fin]

After a few years of neglect I've decided to update this list. My main project is still my novel, however I don't write well in the evenings so I'm intending to spend a few hours each week bringing this up to date. Long term I want to incorporate the newer sources I, Wayward author and plunged have located and add reviews for any sources I own. However that is a lot of work and will take months.

Tonight I added De Crispigny's newest work, Fire Over Luoyang and wrote reviews for The Cambridge History of China, China Between Empires,Leban's thesis, the Yellow Turban thesis and Generals of the South.

If anyone has read any of the books that don't have reviews yet please feel free to PM me with your thoughts. Alternatively if you know of any books that I haven't included and you think I need to add please let me know. Just be patient with me, especially with books you want me to add!

The next things I intend to do are: reviews for Michael Loewe's Bing: From Farmer’s Son to Magistrate in Han China, Everyday Life in Early Imperial China and then add and review his book called The Pride that was China. After that I'll do the same for Peer's Imperial Chinese Armies , Graff's Medieval Chinese Warfare 300-900AD and Sawyers' The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China and then add his book on Zhuge Liang!

[Sun Fin]

I've not added them yet but I'm posting them here so I don't forget about them. I've discovered three new sources:

a) Carl Leban (the author of the thesis about Cao Cao has an article on Sima Yan that was published in the Early Medieval China journal back in 2010.
b) Early Chinese Religion: Part One: Shang through Han (1250 BC-220 AD)
c) Early Chinese Religion, Part Two: The Period of Division (220-589 AD)

The second two are published by Brill, the same company that produced RDC's tome of bios. They appear to be the same high quality of scholarship but also a similar price. The second edition is pretty much all available on google books though and has an interesting section on the ancestor worship of the Emperors' of the 3K period!

[Jia Nanfeng]

I was asked to summarize Three Kingdoms and Chinese Culture in a paragraph. Feel free to snip it down if it’s too long.

-

This book is a collection of essays, by various prominent authors, regarding the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and its implications about Chinese culture then and now. Some of the topics covered include how the novel demonstrates Confucian teachings, why the Peach Tree pact was made and how it later leads to difficult decisions for those involved, why Zhuge Liang’s story is so greatly exaggerated and fictionalized in the novel and elsewhere, and more. There’s also a few essays regarding art based on the book from the past and present, including a comparison to the Three Kingdoms television show. Overall, this book acts as a great companion piece to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, though it may not tread any new ground for those who are particularly well-studied in the novel and/or Confucian culture.