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The article reviews the book "The Huainanzi: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Han China," by Liu An, King of Huainan, translated and edited by John S. Major, Sarah A. Queen, Andrew Seth Meyer, and Harold Roth, with additional contributions by Michael Puett and Judson B. Murray, part of the Translations from the Classics book series.

In the year following the death of her husband, the late Ming woman poet Bo Shaojun (d. 1626) wrote a set of one hundred quatrains lamenting him. Eighty-one poems of this sequence have been preserved. In his study Mindaijosei nojunshi to bungaku. Haku Shokun no Kofushi hakushu (2003) the modern Japanese scholar Kobayashi Tetsuyuki argues that Bo Shaojun's poems should be read as a report of her determination to follow her husband in death, and of the actions undertaken in preparation for that act. This review article questions his analysis by a close reading of some selected poems and Kobayashi's interpretations, and concludes that the poems do not show evidence of a deliberate program of preparation for such a chaste and loyal suicide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]