Anthony C. Yu

Anthony Christopher Yu (Chinese: 余國藩; pinyin: Yú Guófān; October 6, 1938 – May 12, 2015) was a scholar of literature and religion, eastern and western. At the time of his death he was Carl Darling Buck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and Professor Emeritus of Religion and Literature in the Chicago Divinity School; also in the Departments of Comparative Literature, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and English Language and Literature, and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.[2][3]

Anthony C. Yu
Born	August 6, 1938 Hong Kong
Died	May 12, 2015 (aged 76) Chicago
Occupation	Professor
Board member of	Modern Language Association[1]
Spouse(s)	Priscilla Yu
Children	1
Academic background
Education	Ph.D
Alma mater	University of Chicago
Academic work
Discipline	Religion and Literature
Sub-discipline	Comparative Literature, East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Institutions	University of Chicago
Notable works	Translation of Journey to the West

Anthony C. Yu
Traditional Chinese	余國藩
Simplified Chinese	余国藩
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Yú Guófān Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Yùh Gwok-fàahn

Biography

Yu was born in Hong Kong on October 6, 1938. His middle initial "C" was only a legal formality, though Yu later took the middle name Christopher. His father, Pak Chuen Yu, a general in the Chinese Nationalist Army, and his mother Norma Sau Chan, then went to the mainland to escape the Japanese invasion. There, starting at the age of four, Yu learned classical Chinese from his grandfather, who would tell him stories from Journey to the West and draw Chinese characters in the sand for him to learn. After the war he went with his parents to Taiwan.[4] He went to the United States, where he graduated from Houghton College, then took a bachelor’s in theology at Fuller Theological Seminary (S.T.B) and the University of Chicago (Ph.D). Among his honors and awards are elected membership in the American Council of Learned Societies and Academia Sinica,[5] as well as the Guggenheim Fellowship and Mellon Foundation grant.[6][7][8]

Best known for his four-volume translation of Journey to the West (University of Chicago Press),[9] he also published widely in the fields of religion and comparative literature.

He died of heart failure.[10]

Works

• Yu, Anthony C. (1969). The Fall: The Poetic and Theological Realism of Aeschylus, Milton, and Camus.
• —— (1973). Parnassus Revisited: Modern Critical Essays on the Epic Tradition. Chicago: American Library Association. ISBN 0838901328.
• —— (1997). Rereading the Stone: Desire and the Making of Fiction in Dream of the Red Chamber. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691015619.
• —— (2005). State and Religion in China: Historical and Textual Perspectives. Chicago, Ill.: Open Court. ISBN 0812695526.
• --- coedited (with Mary Gerhart) Morphologies of Faith: Essays in Religion and Culture in Honor of Nathan A. Scott, Jr.
• —— (2008). Religion, Education and the Conflict of Culture. Hong Kong: Chung Chi College, Chinese University of Hong Kong. ISBN 9789628216208.

References

1. "Members of the Executive Council, 1997–present". Modern Language Association. Archived from the original on 2020-12-20. Retrieved 2020-12-21.
2. "Anthony C. Yu Norman Maclean Faculty Award". December 2014.
3. Allen, Susie (May 18, 2015). "Anthony C. Yu, translator and scholar of religion and literature, 1938-2015". University of Chicago. Retrieved May 18, 2015.
4. Sam Roberts, "Anthony C. Yu, Translator of the Saga of a Chinese Pilgrimage, Dies at 76" New York Times May 28, 2015
5. "Anthony C. Yu". Academia Sinica. Retrieved 30 August 2019.
6. Allen (2015).
7. "Altered Accents and a Global China —-In Memory of Professor Anthony C Yu". China Hands. 8 January 2018.
8. "Anthony C. Yu (余國藩), 1938-2015". Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews. 37: 1–3. December 2015. JSTOR 26357339.
9. Lattimore, David (1983-03-06). "The Complete 'Monkey'". The New York Times.
10. Roberts, Sam (2015-05-29). "Anthony C. Yu, Translator of the Saga of a Chinese Pilgrimage, Dies at 76 (Published 2015)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2020-12-20. Retrieved 2020-12-21.

Further reading

• Eric Jozef Ziolkowski, ed. Literature, Religion, and East/West Comparison: Essays in Honor of Anthony C. Yu (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005). ISBN 0874138698.