Mao Zedong as Poet and Revolutionary Leader : Social and Historical Perspectives

Lexington Books
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group Inc
 9780739104064
0-7391-0406-3

Mao Zedong was not only a great strategist and politician but also a poet, a philosopher, and calligrapher. As early as the 1940s Mao's poetry was earning critical and popular acclaim. Mao Zedong as Poet.

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and Revolutionary Leader makes all of Mao's extant poems available here for the first time in English. This comprehensive collection offers a unique portrait of Mao's contribution to modern China and his later frustration as he witnessed the country turning from his revolutionary path into a gigantic bureaucracy. Far from descending into mere hagiography, Chunhou Zhang and Edward Vaughan's work presents a balanced picture of Mao as an individual and as a military and political leader. These literal translations of Mao's poetry are framed by a commentary on the meaning, pattern, and style of the original texts--written in the classical style Mao forbade China's youth to emulate--and presented in the context of the social history of the time.