The Book of Songs

Front Cover
Joseph Roe Allen
Grove Press, 1996 - Fiction - 388 pages
Joseph R. Allen's new edition of The Book of Songs restores Arthur Waley's definitive English translations to the original order and structure of the two-thousand-year-old Chinese text. One of the five Confucian classics, The Book of Songs is the oldest collection of poetry in world literature and the finest treasure of traditional songs that antiquity has left us. Arthur Waley's translations, now supplemented by fifteen new translations by Allen, are superb; the songs speak to us across millennia with remarkable directness and power. Where the other Confucian classics treat "outward things, deeds, moral precepts, the way the world works", Stephen Owen tells us in his foreword, The Book of Songs is "the Classic of the human heart and the human mind".
 

Contents

South of Zhou 111
5
South of Shao 1225
13
Airs of Bei 2644
23
Airs of Yong 4554
38
Airs of Wei 5564
46
Airs of the Royal Domain 6574
56
Airs of Zheng 7595
64
Airs of Qi 96106
77
Airs of Bin 15460
119
The Minor Odes Poems 161234
129
The Major Odes Poems 23565
223
The Hymns Poems 266305
287
The Zhou Hymns 26696
291
The Lu Hymns 297300
308
The Shang Hymns 30105
318
Waleys Notes on Books Used
324

Airs of Wey 10713
84
Airs of Tang 11425
90
Airs of Qin 12635
99
Airs of Chen 13645
107
Airs of Gui 14649
113
Airs of Cao 15053
116
Waleys Additional Notes
326
Waleys Original Topical Categories and Order of Poems
333
A Literary History of the Shi jing
336
Selected Bibliography
384
Copyright

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About the author (1996)

Arthur Waley (1889-1966) is highly regarded for his many translations of Chinese & Japanese literature.

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