This path-breaking volume will have a transformative impact on the field of early Chinese intellectual history and will be of great interest to scholars and students alike.

This paper explores Confucius’ views on warfare according to the Gongyang Commentary. Though often overlooked as a source for understanding Confucius’ position on warfare, the Gongyang Commentary is replete with comments and anecdotes on the topic. It articulates a complex set of ethico‐ritual principles pertaining to warfare in which certain kinds of warfare are clearly condoned and praised while others are clearly condemned and criticized. What according to the Gongyang Commentary was the Gentleman's position on warfare? The paper explores this (...) central question through a close reading of anecdotal narratives and selected passages from the Gongyang Commentary and related texts on the subject of warfare. (shrink)

A major resource expanding the study of early Chinese philosophy, religion, literature, and politics, this book features the first complete English-language translation of the_ Luxuriant Gems of the "Spring and Autumn"_,_ _one of the key texts of early Confucianism. The work is often ascribed to the Han scholar and court official Dong Zhongshu, but, as this study reveals, the text is in fact a compendium of writings by a variety of authors working within an interpretive tradition that spanned several generations, (...) depicting a utopian vision of a flourishing humanity that they believed to be Confucius's legacy to the world. The Spring and Autumn is a chronicle kept by the dukes of the state of Lu from 722 to 481 B.C.E. _The Luxuriant Gems_ follows the interpretations of the _Gongyang Commentary_, whose transmitters belonged to a tradition that sought to explicate the special language of the _Spring and Autumn_. The Gongyang masters believed that the_ Spring and Autumn_ had been written by Confucius himself, employing subtle and esoteric phrasing to indicate approval or disapproval of important events and personages. The _Luxuriant Gems_ augments Confucian ethical and philosophical teachings with chapters on cosmology, statecraft, and other topics drawn from contemporary non-Confucian traditions, reflecting the brilliance of intellectual life in the Han dynasty during the formative decades of the Chinese imperial state. To elucidate the text, Sarah A. Queen and John S. Major divide their translation into eight thematic sections with extensive introductions that address dating, authorship, authenticity, and the relationship between the original text and the evolving _Gongyang_ approach. (shrink)

In 2010, the editors of this volume completed the first unabridged English-language translation of the Huainanzi, opening exciting new pathways in the study of philosophy, Asian studies, political science, and Asian literature.

The Han dynasty Huainanzi is a compendium of knowledge. This edited volume follows a multi-disciplinary approach to explore how and why the Huainanzi was produced and how we should interpret the work.

This paper introduces the first English-language book-length study to focus on the rhetorical function of anecdotal narratives across several literary genres of early China. In this volume we seek to clarify the nature and function of early Chinese anecdotes by raising the following questions: What are their characteristic features? What are their generic boundaries, that is to say, how do they relate to other types of narrative? What degree of historical authenticity do they display? How malleable were the stories? What (...) different framing techniques did authors use to fit stock anecdotes into larger narrative contexts? What was the rhetorical power of anecdotes when used in argumentation? How does the early Chinese preference for using anecdotes in argumentation differ from modes of argumentation preferred in other eras and cultures? In addressing these and other questions, this book will advance the idea that anecdotes were an essential rhetorical tool that early Chinese writers used effectively to persuade their audience of one or another point of view. (shrink)

Between History and Philosophy is the first book-length study in English to focus on the rhetorical functions and forms of anecdotal narratives in early China. Edited by Paul van Els and Sarah A. Queen, this volume advances the thesis that anecdotes—brief, freestanding accounts of single events involving historical figures, and occasionally also unnamed persons, animals, objects, or abstractions—served as an essential tool of persuasion and meaning-making within larger texts. Contributors to the volume analyze the use of anecdotes from the Warring (...) States Period to the Han Dynasty, including their relations to other types of narrative, their circulation and reception, and their central position as a mode of argumentation in a variety of historical and philosophical literary genres. (shrink)

Confucius is a key figure not only in Eastern thought and philosophy but in world history as well. The Analects, the sayings attributed to him, is a classic of world literature. Nonetheless there is a great dispute about how to approach and understand both him and his work. This is the first anthology of critical writings on this crucial and influential work. The contributors come to the Analects from a variety of perspectives - including philosophical, philological, and religious - and (...) address a host of key topics. Rigorous yet highly accessible, the volume will also include a general introduction and an exhaustive bibliography on English-language works on Confucius. (shrink)