Anthony C. Yu

Anthony Christopher Yu (; October 6, 1938 – May 12, 2015) was an American literary theorist, sinologist, and theologian. He was a scholar of literature and religion, both East Asian and Western; and was the Carl Darling Buck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and Professor Emeritus of Religion and Literature in the Chicago Divinity School; as well as a member of 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. Yu has published widely in the fields of religion and comparative literature and is perhaps best known for his four-volume translation of one of China's Four Great Classical Novels Journey to the West into English.

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. as well as the Guggenheim Fellowship and Mellon Foundation grant.

He died of heart failure in 2015.

Works

--- coedited (with Mary Gerhart) Morphologies of Faith: Essays in Religion and Culture in Honor of Nathan A. Scott, Jr.