As medieval Chinese manuscripts were copied and recopied through the centuries, both mistakes and deliberate editorial changes were introduced, thereby affecting readers' impressions of the author's intent. In Tao Yuanming and Manuscript Culture, Xiaofei Tian shows how readers not only experience authors but produce them by shaping texts to their interpretation. Tian examines the mechanics and history of textual transmission in China by focusing on the evolution over the centuries of the reclusive poet Tao Yuanming into a figure of epic stature. Considered emblematic of the national character, Tao Yuanming (also known as Tao Qian, 365?-427 c.e.) is admired for having turned his back on active government service and city life to live a simple rural life of voluntary poverty. The artlessness of his poetic style is held as the highest literary and moral ideal, and literary critics have taken great pains to demonstrate perfect consistency between Tao Yuanming's life and poetry. Earlier work on Tao Yuanming has tended to accept this image, interpreting the poems to confirm the image. Tao Yuanming and Manuscript Culture is a study of how this cultural icon was produced and of the elusive traces of another, historical Tao Yuanming behind the icon. By comparing four early biographies of the poet, Tian shows how these are in large measure constructed out of Tao Yuanming's self-image as projected in his poetry and prose. Drawing on work in European medieval literature, she demonstrates the fluidity of the Chinese medieval textual world and how its materials were historically reconfigured for later purposes. Tian finds in Tao's poetic corpus not one essentialized Tao Yuanming, but multiple texts continuously produced long after the author's physical demise. Her provocative look at the influence of manuscript culture on literary perceptions transcends its immediate subject and has special resonance today, when the transition from print to electronic media is shaking the literary world in a way not unlike the transition from handwritten to print media in medieval China.

田曉菲，1971年生人，6歲習古詩，古今中外，閱讀頗豐。1985年經過北京大學英語係、心理學係、中文係老師麵試，特招進入北大英語係。而當時年僅14歲的她，以與生俱來的纔情和聰穎，已齣版兩本詩集，名動天下，真正是少年成名。時隔多年，再次齣現在人們視野中的田曉菲已是執教於哈佛大學東亞係的年輕學者田曉菲瞭，不時有佳作問世，顯示瞭她深厚的知識積澱。讓人驚訝於她的纔情之餘，更驚嘆於她學者的嚴謹與智慧，以及她勤奮踏實地走過的每一步。從北大畢業後，田曉菲遠赴大洋彼岸求學，於1998年獲哈佛大學比較文學博士學位，曾在美國柯蓋特大學，康奈爾大學教書，現在哈佛大學任教。