The Confucius Chronicles

Confucius is among the most admired—and most debated—figures in Chinese history. For some he epitomizes wisdom; for others, unfulfilled aspirations. Wai-yee Li introduces this polyphony through annotated translations of a variety of stories, from Confucius’s biography to a recent internet song. Students and scholars alike will enjoy this book immensely. -- Yuri Pines, author of <i>Zhou History Unearthed: The Bamboo Manuscript </i>Xinian<i> and Early Chinese Historiography</i> For the first time, some of the many stories about Confucius that circulated in China for thousands of years are now available to modern English readers through Wai-yee Li’s translations. With Li’s groundbreaking approach to reading these sources, even the Analects appears here as a more revealing and complex text than ever before. -- Thomas Wilson, author of <i>On Sacred Grounds: Culture, Society, Politics, and the Formation of the Cult of Confucius</i> In an era when pseudo-efficiency and a hyper-focus on fleeting impressions reign supreme, Wai-yee Li’s The Confucius Chronicles reminds us of the delicious pleasures to be experienced not only from “slow reading,” but also from “super-slow reading,” by which one moves from a single passage both vertically in time and horizontally across roughly contemporaneous texts, savoring associations by turns obvious and subtle. Pieties are out. Instead, we find her romp through the centuries. Meanwhile, the Kongzi of the collective imagination comes alive, as we see him by turns excoriated, admired, and co-opted by all manner of would-be claimants to the role of sage, including Han Fei and Li Zhi. This book is a triumph: a teaching text that shows how much we all have to learn! -- Michael Nylan, author of <i>The Chinese Pleasure Book</i> In this lucid and judicious collection, the eminent China scholar Wai-yee Li offers a rich sample of the surprisingly diverse lore surrounding Confucius’s life and thought. The Confucius Chronicles will serve scholarly and general readers alike as an indispensable complement to the Analects. -- David Schaberg, author of <i>A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography</i> Masterfully weaving 2300 years of Confucius imaginaire from the Zhuangzi to the rap on Sunny and Cheerful Kong Yiji, Wai-yee Li brings to life the history of Confucianism in an engrossing anthology of texts on Confucius. Unparalleled, Wai-yee Li combines the power of storytelling with a magisterial historical analysis of the sources. The Confucius Chronicles is a superb, thoughtful quest into the diversity of the Confucian tradition. -- Joachim Gentz, author of <i>Gongyang tradition (Das Gongyang zhuan)</i>