Five Hundred Years of Chinese Poetry offers the only historical survey, in any language, of this important span of Chinese poetry. Written by the foremost Japanese sinologist of this century, and translated here in a lucid analogue to his famous prose style, the work provides a brief but comprehensive review of the period's literary history, a sketch of its political and social history in relation to literature, and a rendering of more than one hundred and fifty poems. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.