Authors: Confucius, Edward Slingerland
ISBN-13: 9780872207721, ISBN-10: 0872207722
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Hackett Publishing Co.
Date Published: March 2006
Edition: 1st Edition
The Essential Analects offers a representative selection from Edward Slingerland's acclaimed translation of the full work, including passages covering all major themes. An appendix of selected traditional commentaries keyed to each passage provides access to the text and to its reception and interpretation. Also included are a glossary of terms and short biographies of the disciples of Confucius and the traditional commentators cited.
Because they offer diverse and sometimes diametrically opposite meanings, the words of Chinese classics are as likely to reflect the prejudices of the translator as the are to exhibit scholarly rigor. This volume is no exception. The publisher's biography of Leys calls him "an astringent observer," and such observations are readily apparent in Leys's sometimes bad-tempered and occasionally ill-judged glosses on a thinker whom he clearly believes would have agreed with him that late 20th-century culture is undergoing the same chaotic moral crisis as 6th-century B.C. China. While the translations are often elegant, and Leys's endnotes offer a few telling examinations of the vagaries and subtleties of translating the Analects, Leys is too often diverted from the Analects by barely relevant citations from European writers and his own digs at other translators of Confucius. Furthermore, neither the introduction nor the endnotes adequately place Confucius in historical context, making the book strangely vague about Confucius's impact on his time and people. (Jan.)
Map | ||
Introduction | ||
I | To Learn, and Then | 1 |
II | In Government, the Secret | 9 |
III | Eight Rows of Dancers | 19 |
IV | Of Villages, Humanity | 31 |
V | Kung-yeh Ch'ang | 41 |
VI | Jan Yung Is One Who | 53 |
VII | Transmitting Insight, But | 65 |
VIII | Surely T'ai Po | 79 |
IX | The Master Rarely | 89 |
X | His Native Village | 101 |
XI | Studies Begin | 111 |
XII | Yen Hui | 125 |
XIII | Adept Lu | 137 |
XIV | Yuan Szu Asked About | 151 |
XV | Duke Ling of Wei | 169 |
XVI | The House of Chi | 183 |
XVII | Yang Huo | 193 |
XVIII | The Lord of Wei | 205 |
XIX | Adept Chang | 215 |
XX | Emperor Yao Said | 227 |
Notes | 233 | |
Historical Table | 246 | |
Key Terms: An Outline of Confucian Thought | 247 | |
Further Reading | 251 |