Garden of Eloquence / Shuoyuan

Garden of Eloquence is a valuable primary source for historians, preserving late Western Han views on history, politics, and ethics, and providing detail on various topics. Eric Henry's translation with facing Chinese text and annotation will make it accessible to Anglophone world historians for the first time.

Format: Hardback
Length: 1360 pages
Publication date: 16 January 2022
Publisher: University of Washington Press

Winner of the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work, sponsored by the Modern Language Association An anthology of literary gems compiled in early China, newly translated and annotated 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 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.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780295995199