Stephen Owen (sinologist)

Stephen Owen
Born	(1946-10-30) October 30, 1946 (age 79) St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
Alma mater	Yale University (BA, PhD)
Spouse	Xiaofei Tian
Scientific career
Fields	Chinese poetry, comparative literature
Institutions	Harvard University
Doctoral advisor	Hans Fränkel
Chinese name
Chinese	宇文所安
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Yǔwén Suǒ'ān

Stephen Owen (born October 30, 1946) is an American sinologist specializing in Chinese literature, particularly Tang dynasty poetry and comparative poetics. He taught Chinese literature and comparative literature at Harvard University and is James Bryant Conant University Professor, Emeritus; becoming emeritus before he was one of only 25 Harvard University Professors. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. ^[1]

Life and career

Owen was born on October 30, 1946, in St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated from Yale University in 1968 with a Bachelor of Arts in Chinese literature. He continued at Yale as a graduate student under the supervision of Hans Fränkel, receiving a Ph.D. in Chinese literature in 1972 with a dissertation entitled "The Poetry of Meng Chiao (751–814) and Han Yu (768–824): A Study of a Chinese Poetic Reform".

After receiving his Ph.D., Owen taught at Yale until 1982, when he moved to Harvard. He has been a Fulbright Scholar and received a Guggenheim Fellowship, ^[2] among many other awards and honors. ^[3] In 2015, he completed a six-volume annotated translation of the complete surviving poems of Du Fu, culminating an eight-year project. ^{[4] [5]} He was jointly awarded the 2018 Tang Prize in Sinology with Yoshinobu Shiba, "for his penetrating scholarship and theoretical ingenuity in Classical Chinese prose and poetry, especially Tang poetry and its translation." ^{[6] [7] [8]}

Academic career

Owen has written or edited dozens of books, articles, and anthologies in the field of Chinese literature, especially Chinese poetry. ^[3] Harvard Magazine reported in 1998 that colleagues saw Owen as "a soaring and highly imaginative free spirit," comparing him to the eighth-century Chinese calligrapher Huaisu and to the foremost Tang dynasty poet, "the unfettered, convention-defying Li Bai..." ^[9]

Of The Poetry of Meng Chiao and Han Yü, James J. Y. Liu said that it "represents a remarkable achievement, especially for a first book..." ^[10] A reviewer in China Review International wrote "reading Stephen Owen's The Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry shocked me, the way a seismic shift in paradigms will." ^[11]

Selected publications

• The Poetry of Meng Chiao and Han Yü. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975. ISBN   0300018223.
• The Poetry of the Early T'ang. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977. ISBN   0300021038.
  • Revised Edition, Quirin Press 2012, ISBN   978-1-922169-02-0.
• The Great Age of Chinese Poetry : The High T'ang. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. ISBN   0300023677.
  • Revised Edition, Quirin Press 2013, ISBN   978-1-922169-06-8.
• Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics: Omen of the World. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. ISBN   0299094200.
• Remembrances: The Experience of the Past in Classical Chinese Literature. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986. ISBN   0674760158 (alk. paper).
• Mi-Lou : Poetry and the Labyrinth of Desire. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 1989. ISBN   0674572750 (alk. paper).
• Readings in Chinese Literary Thought. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Council on East Asian Studies Distributed by Harvard University Press, Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 1992. ISBN   0674749200.
• An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911. New York: W.W. Norton, 1st, 1996. ISBN   0393038238.
• The End of the Chinese 'Middle Ages': Essays in Mid-Tang Literary Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. ISBN   0804726663 (alk. paper) ISBN   0804726671 (pbk. alk. paper).
• The Late Tang: Chinese Poetry of the Mid-Ninth Century (827-860). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center : Distributed by Harvard University Press, Harvard East Asian Monographs, 2006. ISBN   0674021371.
• The Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry. Cambridge, Massachusetts: published by the Harvard University Asia Center: Distributed by Harvard University Press, Harvard East Asian Monographs, 2006. ISBN   0674021363.
• Kang-i Sun Chang and Stephen Owen, eds. The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

See also

• List of Guggenheim Fellowships awarded in 1986

References

1. "Stephen Owen". ealc.fas.harvard.edu. Archived from the original on April 4, 2023. Retrieved 2024-01-12.
2. Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships Archived 2011-06-22 at the Wayback Machine
3. Vita: Stephen Owen
4. "Translating nine pounds of poetry". Harvard Gazette . 11 April 2016.
5. Shaw, Jonathan (April 12, 2016). "The Complete Works of Du Fu, China's Shakespeare, Published in English". Harvard Magazine . Retrieved January 12, 2024.
6. "Tang Prize | Laureates". www.tang-prize.org. Retrieved 2023-10-05.
7. "Tang Prize | Laureates | Stephen Owen". www.tang-prize.org. Retrieved 2024-01-12.
8. "Stephen Owen ('68, Ph.D '72) has been awarded the prestigious Tang Prize for lifetime contributions to Sinology | East Asian Languages and Literatures". eall.yale.edu. Retrieved 2024-01-12.
9. "Anthologizing" Harvard Magazine
10. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 36 (1976): 294-297. JSTOR
11. David McCraw. "The Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry (review)." China Review International 14.2 (2007): 355-359. Project MUSE. Web. 16 Apr. 2013.

External links

• Stephen Owen's profile at Harvard
• Stephen Owen to Inaugurate "Hu Shi Liberal-Arts Lecture Series" 2010