The Poetry of Du Fu by Du Fu
Published 2016 · 900,000 words · about 75 hours at an average pace · Non-Fiction, Literary Criticism, Poetry Criticism
How hard is The Poetry of Du Fu to read?
The Poetry of Du Fu scores 39 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 70 out of 100
- Classical poetic terminology, Tang-dynasty historical vocabulary, and technical prosody terms throughout the annotations.
- Sentence structure: 62 out of 100
- Abstraction: 78 out of 100
- Arguments about poetic meaning, allusion networks, and translation philosophy operate at a high level of literary abstraction.
- Information density: 85 out of 100
- Annotation layers biographical context, historical events, allusion tracking, and prosodic analysis on every poem.
- Narrative indirection: 20 out of 100
- The critical argument unfolds obliquely through accumulated annotation rather than through a single thesis statement.
- Symbolic density: 20 out of 100
- Symbolic readings of Du Fu's imagery are careful and historically grounded rather than freestanding.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Owen's critical tone is earnest; his irony appears only when discussing misreadings in the critical tradition.
- Resolution withholding: 15 out of 100
- The evaluative argument about Du Fu's greatness is stated upfront; specific interpretive questions are resolved poem by poem.
- Structural complexity: 52 out of 100
- Six volumes organized chronologically, each requiring readers to track the evolving poetic career and historical context.
How The Poetry of Du Fu is regarded
The Poetry of Du Fu holds a literary regard score of 87 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.