Robin D. S. Yates, in the blurb on the back of this thick volume, characterizes the Huainanzi as a text “long dismissed” as a “miscellaneous work of little intellectual interest.” Doubtless this breezy characterization is meant to pique interest and encourage sales of this important new translation, but no serious student of Han politics or culture has ever regarded the Huainanzi as anything less than a major touchstone. Every synoptic history of Chinese philosophy or political thought discusses the work, as do several specialized studies, as duly noted (pp. 38–39). For that reason, it is a cause for great celebration that students of Chinese culture can now consult this complete translation, twelve long years in the making. Close comparison of its contents with those of other Han masterworks in translation—especially the Lüshi chunqiu, Jia Yi's Xinshu, and the Yantie lun, perhaps—can only heighten our appreciation of the...
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Book Review|
May 01 2011
The Huainanzi: Liu An, King of Huainan: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Han China
The Huainanzi: Liu An, King of Huainan: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Han China
. Translated and edited by John S. Major, Sarah A. Queen, Andrew Seth Meyer, and Harold D. Roth. New York
: Columbia University Press
, 2010
. ix
–xi
, 988 pp. $75.00 (cloth).
Michael Nylan
Michael Nylan
University of California, Berkeley
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Journal of Asian Studies (2011) 70 (2): 533–534.
Citation
Michael Nylan; The Huainanzi: Liu An, King of Huainan: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in Early Han China. Journal of Asian Studies 1 May 2011; 70 (2): 533–534. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911811000295
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