Hardback
January 16, 2022
9780295995199
English
1360
9.00 Inches (US)
6.00 Inches (US)
2.6 Pounds (US)
$125.00 USD, £103.00 GBP
v2.1 Reference

Garden of Eloquence / Shuoyuan

By Liu Xiang
Introduction by Eric Henry, Translated by Eric Henry, Series edited by Andrew Plaks and Michael Nylan
In 17 BCE the Han dynasty archivist Liu Xiang presented to the throne a collection of some seven hundred items of varying length, mostly quasi-historical anecdotes and narratives, that he deemed essential reading for wise leadership. Garden of Eloquence (Shuoyuan), divided into twenty books grouped by theme, follows a tradition of narrative writing on historical and philosophical themes that began seven centuries earlier. Long popular in China as a source of allusions and quotations, it preserves late Western Han views concerning history, politics, and ethics. Many of its anecdotes are attributed to Confucius's speeches and teachings that do not appear in earlier texts, demonstrating that long after Confucius's death in 479 BCE it was still possible for new "historical" narratives to be created.

Garden of Eloquence is valuable as a repository of items that originally appeared in other early collections that are no longer extant, and it provides detail on topics as various as astronomy and astrology, yin-yang theory, and quasi-geographical and mystical categories. Eric Henry's unabridged translation with facing Chinese text and extensive annotation will make this important primary source available for the first time to Anglophone world historians.

About the Authors

Liu Xiang (79–08 BCE) was a scholar-official of the Western (Former) Han dynasty. Eric Henry is senior lecturer emeritus of Asian studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Reviews

"[M]asterful and meticulously annotated rendering of Shuoyuan. Garden of Eloquence is an excellent and beneficial contribution to the growing number of translations of ancient Chinese literature."—IIAS Newsletter

"[S]uperbly crafted and aptly annotated. A monumental translation, which is much recommended to scholars of Confucianism and premodern East Asian religions."—Religious Studies Review

Endorsements

"Perhaps more than any other scholar of early China, Liu Xiang was responsible for determining the content and configuration of official Chinese knowledge. Henry's translation makes audible in English a hitherto unheard but important voice."—Sarah Queen, Connecticut College

"This definitive translation of a very important classical Chinese text with its useful scholarly apparatus will be of great value to the fields of Chinese history and literary studies."—J. Michael Farmer, University of Texas at Dallas

"The Shuoyuan is one of the most important texts that have come down to us from the Han dynasty. Eric Henry's complete and profusely annotated translation includes the establishment of a carefully collated critical text based on the best modern critical editions published in China. Professor Henry's work, based on many years of meticulous research, makes a very substantial contribution to the study of ancient Chinese intellectual history."—Christoph Harbsmeier, professor emeritus, University of Oslo

"With his usual wit and style, Eric Henry brings to life Liu Xiang's Shuoyuan. This engaging compendium of anecdotes and aphorisms addresses the various means to achieve an enlightened government. But it is also an important source on other topics, such as music, morals, yin-yang theory and rhetoric. The text also embodies the Han fondness for mining historical anecdotes for useful models of administering the state. In short, the Shuoyuan is essential reading for understanding the political and administrative concerns of the late Western Han dynasty."—Anne Behnke Kinney, University of Virginia

9780295995199 : garden-of-eloquence-shuoyuan-liu-xiang-henry-henry
Hardback
1360 Pages
$125.00 USD

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