The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors

by E. Brooks, A. Brooks

Overview

This new translation presents the Analects in a revolutionary new format that, for the first time in any language, distinguishes the original words of the Master from the later sayings of his disciples and their followers, enabling readers to experience China's most influential philosophical work in its true historical, social, and political context.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231104302
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	04/14/1998
Series:	Translations from the Asian Classics
Pages:	342
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

E. Bruce Brooks is Research Professor of Chinese at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has published studies on various aspects of textual analysis in Chinese and English.A. Taeko Brooks is the coauthor, with E. Bruce Brooks, of Chinese Character Frequency Lists and with him was the cofounder in 1993 of the Warring States Working Group.

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Original Analects (LY)
Confucius Himself LY 4
The Early Circle
LY 5 / LY 6
The Dzvngd Transformation
LY 7
LY 8
LY 9
The Kung Transition
LY 10
LY 11
LY 3
THe Hundred Schools
LY 12
LY 13
LY 2
The Last Debates
LY 14
LY 15
A Private Interlude
LY 1
LY 16
Return to Court
LY 17
LY 18
The Conquest of Lu
LY 19
LY 20
Appendices
1: The Accretion Theory of the Analects
2: Developmental Patterns in the Analects
3: A Window on the Hundred Schools
4: Confucius and His Circle
5: A reading of LY 1-4 in Text Order
Apparatus
Works Cited
Romanization Equivalence Table
Interpolations Finding List
Index
Afterword

What People are Saying About This

David S. Nivison

The Original Analects shows the text evolving over 230 years following the Master's death. It identifies and dates each layer of accretion, bringing the text to life and throwing a probing light on shifts and shades of thought in Warring States China, generation by generation. It represents an exciting mode of investigation that will require most post scholarship on ancient Chinese philosophy to be redone.

— David S. Nivison, Stanford University

Frederick W. Mote

Meticulously demonstrating a powerful method of textual analysis which has roots in earlier Chinese scholarship, The Original Analects inaugurates a new era. Scholars take note: the study of early China will never be the same. And its richly thoughtful commentaries assure that the general reader will stop to ponder the words of the most influential book in the long history of the Chinese civilization.

Editorial Reviews

The Original Analects is a remarkable book that ranks among the most significant and impressive works on Chinese thought ever published in English.

Journal of Asian Studies

Its insightful readings and interpretive strategies stand to enrich our overall understanding of the Analects and its traditions.

International Studies in Philosophy - Lisa Raphals

The most exciting study of the Lun yu yet published in a Western language. Its potential implications are monumental, ranging from a rewriting of our understanding of early Confucianism and the nature of intellectual transmission in early China.

Chinese Review International

With the publication of this translation, scholars now have a fully developed interpretation of a single text with which to test the Brooks' hypotheses. Undoubtedly we have not heard the last or even the definitive word on dating texts in early China. But the Brooks should be credited with pushing the field one great step further along in its development.

Pacific Affairs

Its insightful readings and interpretive strategies stand to enrich our overall understanding of the Analects and its traditions.

— Lisa Raphals

International Studies in Philosophy

The Brooks project includes a translation, but their major contribution is a suggested ordering and dating of chapters, with identification of interpolated passages therein, so as to invite future re-examination of the book as a whole.

Journal of Asian History

The Original Analects shows the text evolving over 230 years following the Master's death. It identifies and dates each layer of accretion, bringing the text to life and throwing a probing light on shifts and shades of thought in Warring States China, generation by generation. It represents an exciting mode of investigation that will require most post scholarship on ancient Chinese philosophy to be redone.

David S. Nivison

Meticulously demonstrating a powerful method of textual analysis which has roots in earlier Chinese scholarship, The Original Analects inaugurates a new era. Scholars take note: the study of early China will never be the same. And its richly thoughtful commentaries assure that the general reader will stop to ponder the words of the most influential book in the long history of the Chinese civilization.

Frederick W. Mote

Editors E. Brooks (Chinese language and literature, U. of Massachusetts-Amherst) and A. Taeko Brooks, a scholar of Japanese history previously combined talents to product their 1974 . Here they put the classic Chinese text into historical, cultural, and intellectual settings and organize the sayings in a chronological sequence that distinguishes Confucius' original words from the later commentary of his followers and illuminates how the teachings changed through the two centuries of its compilation. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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