Comparative Journeys

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Throughout his academic career, Anthony C. Yu has employed a comparative approach to literary analysis that pays careful attention to the religious and philosophical elements of Chinese and Western texts. His mastery of both canons remains unmatched in the field, and his immense knowledge of the contexts that gave rise to each tradition supplies the foundations for ideal comparative scholarship. In these essays, Yu explores the overlap between literature and religion in Chinese and Western literature, beginning with an introduction to a principal method for relating texts to religion and then following with several essays that apply this approach to single texts in discrete traditions: the Greek religion in Prometheus, Christian theology in Milton, ancient Chinese religious thought in Laozi, and Chinese religious syncretism in The Journey to the West. Yu's essays also juxtapose Chinese and Western texts ( Cratylus next to Xunzi, for example, and their relationship to language) and subjects (liberal Greek education against general education in China), and compare a specific Western text and religion to a specific Chinese text and religion (such as the Commedia in the context of Catholic theology vs. The Journey to the West in the context of Chinese syncretism, united by the theme of pilgrimage). Yu's focus isn't entirely tied to the classics. He also considers the struggle for human rights in China and how this topic relates to ancient Chinese social thought and modern notions of rights in the West.