Education About Asia: Online Archives

Web Gleanings: Asian Literature

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Book for The Yung Lo Emperor’s Great Encyclopedia
The Yung Lo Emperor’s Great Encyclopedia
http://www.loc.gov/rr/asian/guide/
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Title: The World of Asian Books

URL: http://www.loc.gov/rr/asian/guide/guide-world.html

This is a Library of Congress Interactive Guide to their Asian book collection. By going through this guide, one can see the variety and breadth not only of the Library’s collection, but of Asian literature itself.

Title: Asia Source: Literature: Authors

URL: http://www.asiasource.org/links/al_mp_03.cfm?TID=21,29,41

Annotated links to a variety of works by Asian authors can be found on this page, which is produced by the Asia Society. The authors range from the well-known, such as Salman Rushdie, to the obscure, and include authors from China, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Japan.

Title: Bibliography of Asian and Pacific Islander American Literature

URL: http://www.wingluke.org/bibliography.html

This lengthy bibliography is especially helpful to teachers and students. It is organized by country, and within each country are grade level sections. It was created by the Wing Luke Asian Museum.

Title: SASIALIT: Literature of South Asia and the Indian Diaspora

URL: http://sasialit.org/

The site of the mailing list SASIALIT has two major benefits. First is the link to the archives of the mailing list, and second is the list of South Asian literature resources online. These include e-journals, bibliographies, and authors’ pages.

Title: SAWNET Bookshelf

URL: http://www.sawnet.org/books/

SAWNET is the South Asian Women’s Network. This particular page focuses on books. There are sections on poetry, non-fiction, cooking, and feminism. The book review section is enormous and is updated regularly

Title: Southeast Asia Literature Links

URL: http://www.hawaii.edu/indolang/links.html

This site has links to pages for three countries in Southeast Asia: Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. For each country, there are a few links to pertinent pages on literature. While the listings appear to be scanty, there are, in fact, not many literature sites on the Web for these countries.

Title: Modern Literature of Southeast Asia: Research Portal

URL: http://members.freespeech.org/southeast-asian-literature/ resources/index.html

There are four sections on this page. An especially useful one is the highly detailed sample syllabus for a course in modern Southeast Asian literature. One of the sections is outside the focus of this article, but might prove to be very helpful to those who use the Web. It describes how to discern the value of Web pages, from appearance to accuracy.

Title: Contemporary Afghan Farsi Poetry

URL: http://www.geocities.com/hassan_fawad/

This page of contemporary poetry is for readers of Farsi. It is included here because of the dearth of Web pages on Afghan literature, and some readers may be able to make use of these pages. In some cases there are photos and additional information (in English) about the poets.

Title: Bangladeshi Novels

URL: http://www.bangladeshinovels.com/introduction.html

The introduction to this site provides a lengthy overview of literature pre- and post-1947 in Bangladesh. The “Articles” section is comprised of biographies of authors, some quite thorough and extensive. There is also a section of short bios listing the novels and awards of many authors. More than fifteen excerpts from a variety of novels are posted on the site.

Title: Chinese Classical Literature

URL: http://zhongwen.com/gudian.htm

This site would be of interest to anyone interested in Chinese literature and the Chinese language. There are seven classical texts that are all shown on the site in Chinese. In addition, there are English translations and character-by-character explications of the etymology of each word.

Title: Modern Chinese Literature and Culture: Book Reviews

URL: http://mclc.osu.edu/rc/reviews.htm

The reviews included here are published online by the journal Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. The reviews are for books written or translated into English, and cover the years 2003–2006.

Title: Chinese Literature: An Annotated Directory of Internet Resources

URL: http://newton.uor.edu/Departments&Programs/Asian StudiesDept/china-lit.html

The links on this page could keep one busy for weeks. There are links to classical texts and articles about the authors, some of which are in Chinese. There are also links to several e-journals, as well as a section devoted to the Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian.

Title: Literature & Texts: Indian

URL: http://www.digitalbookindex.com/_search/search010 literatureindian.asp

The Internet has a huge number of digital texts. Here is a list of a large number of texts from India, many of which are from the University of Pittsburgh. The search engine for this site can be used to find literature for other Asian nations as well.

Title: Japanese Literature

URL: http://www.f.waseda.jp/mjewel/jlit/index.html

This site has a varied selection of resources. There is an overview of Japanese literary history, with timelines covering the classical and modern periods. There is also an extensive collection of short biographies of modern Japanese authors. A good selection of links is provided, including links to authors’ pages, journals, libraries, and institutions.

Title: Online Books: Japanese Literature

URL: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/ book/browse?type=lcsubc&key=Japanese%20literature

The University of Pennsylvania has compiled a list of over 25,000 free Japanese literature books on the Web, which includes Botchan and Kokoro.

Title: History of Japan’s Literature

URL: http://www.kanzaki.com/jinfo/jliterature.html

Arranged in timeline form, this chronological view of Japan’s literary history is accompanied by links to texts or other appropriate sites.

Title: THDL Literature Collections

URL: http://www.thdl.org/collections/literature/

In addition to images, maps, and audiovisual materials, the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library has begun to digitize several literary texts of Tibet. The initial focus of this project is on the collection of Tibetan Buddhist scriptures known as The Collected Tantras of the Ancients.

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For additional sites on Asian Literature, I have an online compilation on the EAA page at: http://www.aasianst.org/EAA/wg-lit.htm.