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brightknightie) wrote2024-01-14 08:23 pm
brightknightie) wrote2024-01-14 08:23 pm
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Snowflake challenge #7 (2024): "Fannish creative resource(s)"
Challenge #7: Share a fannish creative resource.
Journey to the West Research is an archive for Jim McClanahan's research into the historical, religious, and folklore origins of the classic Chinese sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West.
As he himself firmly points out, he does not have a PhD and is not associated with any university. He is, however, a mega-fan of the novel who knows how to cite sources. His site is the broadest and best Journey to the West resource I've yet seen. I imagine that it may perhaps be the most such related info assembled in one place in English, period.
Since 2012, he's been writing -- and updating and revising -- his own essays about everything JttW. From debates about Sun Wukong's height to his connection to the Boxer Rebellion to his connections to various Chinese ethnic groups to his worship in nineteenth-century San Francisco to just how many people he kills in the course of the novel to why the fillet/cap/crown is shaped as it is... to the predecessor and successor literature and folklore... to, of course, Dragonball Z and DC Comics and Lego Monkie Kid.
But that's just the start. His site also shares PDFs of such resources as a Qing-period color-illustrated complete edition of the novel, a 1620 woodblock print edition of Creation of the Gods, a c.1700 The Comprehensive Mirror of Successive Divine Immortals, etc. Many of the smaller items, he's translated himself.
(His site also has some PDFs that likely it should not, such as of still-in-copyright translations and articles from academic journals. I don't like this. He always directs his readers to go buy the original products. He takes things down when asked. But evangelizing for more people to read and understand the novel is not an acceptable excuse for not actively getting the authors'/owners' permission before posting their work.)
Journey to the West Research is an archive for Jim McClanahan's research into the historical, religious, and folklore origins of the classic Chinese sixteenth-century novel Journey to the West.
As he himself firmly points out, he does not have a PhD and is not associated with any university. He is, however, a mega-fan of the novel who knows how to cite sources. His site is the broadest and best Journey to the West resource I've yet seen. I imagine that it may perhaps be the most such related info assembled in one place in English, period.
Since 2012, he's been writing -- and updating and revising -- his own essays about everything JttW. From debates about Sun Wukong's height to his connection to the Boxer Rebellion to his connections to various Chinese ethnic groups to his worship in nineteenth-century San Francisco to just how many people he kills in the course of the novel to why the fillet/cap/crown is shaped as it is... to the predecessor and successor literature and folklore... to, of course, Dragonball Z and DC Comics and Lego Monkie Kid.
But that's just the start. His site also shares PDFs of such resources as a Qing-period color-illustrated complete edition of the novel, a 1620 woodblock print edition of Creation of the Gods, a c.1700 The Comprehensive Mirror of Successive Divine Immortals, etc. Many of the smaller items, he's translated himself.
(His site also has some PDFs that likely it should not, such as of still-in-copyright translations and articles from academic journals. I don't like this. He always directs his readers to go buy the original products. He takes things down when asked. But evangelizing for more people to read and understand the novel is not an acceptable excuse for not actively getting the authors'/owners' permission before posting their work.)
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