The West has seen an upsurge of interest in the traditional Chinese novel in the last thirty years. However, in this thriving field, one of its masterpieces, Sanguo yanyi, or Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel in Moss Roberts's translation (also known as Romance of the Three Kingdoms), has not received the attention it deserves, in curious contrast to the scholarship lavished on other novels. The volume under review is both an addition to the scholarship on the Chinese novel in general and a notable work in the study of this novel in particular.

This volume, which grew out of the conference “The Historical, Fictional, Theatrical, and Artistic Three Kingdoms: A Sino-American Colloquium,” held in Chengdu and Nanchong in 2001, uses a popular, if overtaxed, term, “culture,” understandably to accommodate the papers dealing with diverse subjects. The volume opens with a foreword by Moss Roberts, “The Language of Values in the Ming Novel Three Kingdoms,” in which the translator of the masterpiece notes, “Three Kingdoms can be read as a study of values in conflict” (p. vii). This observation sets the tone for many of the papers included in the volume.

This collection is divided into four parts. Part I, “Three Kingdoms and Chinese Values,” consists of three essays. Constantine Tung's “Cosmic Foreordination and Human Commitment: The Tragic Volition in Three Kingdoms” discusses the tensions between human will and cosmic force, or, in the Chinese context, the will of heaven, which often opposes human aspirations and efforts, and the tragic outcome of human endeavors. Tung aptly compares the heroic struggles in the novel with Greek tragedies. Dominic Cheung, in “Essential Regrets: The Structure of Tragic Consciousness in Three Kingdoms,” deals with the conflict between the seemingly superhuman valor, resilience, and aggressiveness of the heroes and what he calls their human limitations, such as mortality, resulting in the predominant feeling of fatigue. These two essays are relevant, not only to this particular novel, but also to the history of Chinese literature, as they shed new light on the tragic vision. Jiyuan Yu concentrates on the concept of yi, translated as “appropriateness,” and uncovers the “vagueness and tensions inherent within the Confucian theory” (p. 27).

Part II consists of two papers dealing with the relationship between history or historiography and the novel. George Hayden, in “The Beginning of the End: The Fall of the Han and the Opening of Three Kingdoms,” contrasts the complexity in historiography and the novel's attempt at simplification in depicting the causation of historical events, manifested in the interpretation of various portents and the emperors' responses to them, or lack thereof. Hoyt Cleveland Tillman studies the roles that the historical works of Sima Guang and Chen Liang have played in elevating the status of Zhuge Liang: their works “provided some of the key milestones along the road toward Kongming's [Zhuge Liang] brilliance and clever tricks in the novel” (p. 66).

Part III consists of three essays that deal in different ways with drama and the novel. Kimberly Besio, in “Zhuge Liang and Zhang Fei: Bowang shao tun and Competing Masculine Ideals within the Development of the Three Kingdoms Story Cycle,” explores different ideals of masculinity in two different editions—from the Yuan and Ming, respectively—of the titular play. Catherine Pagani studies the characters and events of Three Kingdoms in China's popular woodblock prints, nianhua, or “New Year prints,” in particular how the theatrical representation of certain themes influenced these prints. Elisabeth Wichmann-Walczak studies the successful contemporary Peking opera (Jingju) based on an episode from the novel, Cao Cao and Yang Xiu, a testimony to the vitality of the novel and the versatility of the playwright, the director, and the actors, whose efforts have produced “one of the finest pieces of theater in the twentieth century anywhere in the world” (p. 111). She has explored various aspects of the recent production, a continuation of the tradition of the novel's theatrical transmission.

In part IV, “Three Kingdoms and the Contemporary East Asia,” Junbao Hong studies the television series Three Kingdoms and the “gains, losses, and implications” of the modern media; and Jinhee Kim discusses the translations and receptions of the novel in South Korea. This part concludes with Bojun Shen's “Studies of Three Kingdoms in the New Century,” translated by Besio, an essay on the state of the subfield and its prospects.

Although one might wish that the conference format had been further modified, the editors have done a good service with a well-edited volume, for which they should be congratulated. Many essays are provocative, so much so that one wishes they had been expanded.