In this first full-fledged intellectual biography of the brilliant and multifaceted Chinese scholar Wang Kuo-wei (1877-1927), Joey Bonner throws important newlight on the range and course of ideasin early twentieth-century China. Coincidentally, she illuminates the nature ofWang's intimate, thirty-year personaland professional association with thewell-known Chinese scholar Lo Chen-yü(1866-1940) and provides a most comprehensive and compelling account of her biographee's posthumouslycontroversial career in the years following the 1911 Revolution. Pursuing her subject across thewhole spectrum of his many scholarlyinterests, Bonner critically examinesWang's essays on German philosophy andphilosophical aesthetics; his poetry, literary criticism, and aesthetic theory; andhis works on ancient Chinese history, particularly of the Shang dynasty. Insightfully relating his strenuous intellectual search in the fields of philosophy, literature, and history to his very personal quest for truth, beauty, and virtue, Bonner shows in this finely crafted bookhow Wang's unhappiness in later life aswell as his suicide can be understood onlywithin the context of his humanistic concerns in general and his extreme commitment in the postimperial period to theConfucian ethicoreligious tradition inparticular. Without compromising theclearheaded critical detachment thatcharacterizes her analysis of the intricacies of his thought, Bonner has produceda portrait of Wang Kuo-wei suffused withwarmth and sympathetic respect. | Wang Kuo-wei by Joey Bonner, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters