Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan左傳: Commentary on the "Spring and Autumn Annals": Three Volumes (Classics of Chinese Thought) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0295999152 ISBN 13: 9780295999159

Publisher: University of Washington Press, 2016

Synopsis

Winner of the Patrick D. Hanan Book Prize for Translation (China and Inner Asia), sponsored by the Association for Asian Studies

Zuo Tradition (Zuozhuan; sometimes called The Zuo Commentary) is China’s first great work of history. It consists of two interwoven texts - the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu, a terse annalistic record) and a vast web of narratives and speeches that add context and interpretation to the Annals. Completed by about 300 BCE, it is the longest and one of the most difficult texts surviving from pre-imperial times. It has been as important to the foundation and preservation of Chinese culture as the historical books of the Hebrew Bible have been to the Jewish and Christian traditions. It has shaped notions of history, justice, and the significance of human action in the Chinese tradition perhaps more so than any comparable work of Latin or Greek historiography has done to Western civilization. This translation, accompanied by the original text, an introduction, and annotations, will finally make Zuozhuan accessible to all.

About this title

About the Authors

Stephen Durrant is professor emeritus of Chinese language and literature, University of Oregon. He is the author of The Cloudy Mirror: Tension and Conflict in the Writings of Sima Qian (State University of New York Press, 1995); coauthor of The Siren and the Sage: Knowledge and Wisdom in Ancient Greece and China (Cassell, 2000); cotranslator of Zuo Traditions / Zuozhuan (University of Washington Press, 2017); and coeditor of Early China / Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons (State University of New York Press, 2002).

Wai-yee Li is professor of Chinese literature at Harvard University. She is the author of The Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography (Harvard University Asia Center, 2007) and Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature (Harvard University Asia Center, 2014); cotranslator of Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan (University of Washington Press, 2016); and coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature (1000 BCE-900 CE) (Oxford University Press, 2017).

David Schaberg is professor of Asian languages and culture and dean of humanities at UCLA. He is the author of A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography; and cotranslator of Zuo Traditions / Zuozhuan (University of Washington Press, 2017).

Michael Nylan is professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of The Five "Confucian" Classics (Yale University Press, 2001) and Yang Xiong and the Pleasures of Reading and Classical Learning in China (American Oriental Society, 2011), coauthor of Lives of Confucius: Civilization's Greatest Sage through the Ages (Doubleday, 2010); translator of Exemplary Figures (University of Washington Press, 2013) and The Canon of Supreme Mystery (SUNY Press, 1993) by Yang Xiong; and coeditor of Chang'an 26 BCE: An Augustan Age in China (University of Washington Press, 2014).

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0295999152
• ISBN 13: 9780295999159
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 2243