Acknowledgments -- List of Illustrations -- Introduction -- A Poetic Narrative of Change: Du Fu's Poetic Sequence "Going Out the Passes: First Series" (Stephen Owen) -- Autobiographical Features in Bai Juyi's "Biography of the Maestro of Mellow Versification" (Victor H. Mair and Rostislav Berezkin) -- Luo Binwang's Defense of a Jilted Lady: "Amorous Feelings: On Behalf of Miss Guo Sent to Lu Zhaolin" (David R. Knechtges) -- The Fall of Former Shu in 925: An Eyewitness Account (Glen Dudbridge) -- The Elder of the Eastern Hall Reforms a Prodigal Son: A Play by Qin Jianfu (Robert E. Hegel) -- Time Management and Self-Control: Self-Help Guides in Yuan (Stephen H. West) -- Rethinking Li Kaixian's Editorship of Revised Plays by Yuan Masters: A Comparison with His Banter about Lyrics (Tian Yuan Tan) -- Singing in Place of Screaming: Subversion As Satire in Late Imperial China (Kimberly Besio) -- The Shape of Things: Locating the Self in Xu Wei's Zen Master Yu Has a Voluptuous Dream (Shiamin Kwa) -- Passion and Chastity: Meng Chengshun and the Fall of the Ming (Katherine Carlitz) -- The Representation of Sovereignty in Chinese Vernacular Fiction (Xiaofei Tian) -- Music and Dramatic Lyricism in Hong Sheng's Palace of Eternal Life (Ayling Wang) -- Between Performance, Manuscript, and Print: Imagining the Musical Text in Seventeenth-Century Plays and Songbooks (Judith T. Zeitlin) -- Guangdong's Talented Women of the Eighteenth Century (Ellen Widmer) -- Unorthodox Female Figures in Zhu Suxian's Linked Rings of Jade (Siao-chen Hu) -- The Poetess and the Precept Master: A Selection of Daoist Poems by Gu Taiqing (Beata Grant) -- In Search of a Genuine Chinese Sound: Jiang Wenye and Modern Chinese Music (David Der-wei Wang) -- The Guo Guan Ritual Shadow Play of Huanxian (Frank Kouwenhoven and Antoinet Schimmelpenninck).

Rejective Poetry Sound and Sense in Yi Sha (Maghiel van Crevel) -- Master of the Web: Chen Cun and the Continuous Avant-Garde (Michel Hockx) -- Wilt Idema: A Bibliography -- Notes on Contributors -- Index.