The Norton Critical Edition of the Analects has just been published. Edited by Michael Nylan, it joins together Nylan’s Introduction, Simon Leys’s translation of the text, and a series of interpretive essays:
- Nicolas Zufferey • On the Ru and Confucius
- Robert Eno • In Search of the Origins of Confucian Traditions in Lu
- Mark Csikszentmihalyi and Tae Hyun Kim • The Formation of the Analects
- Eric L. Hutton • Mencius, Xunzi, and the Legacy of Confucius
- Luke Habberstad • The Sage and His Associates: Kongzi and Disciples across Early Texts
- Julia K. Murray • Visualizing Confucius and His Disciples from the Analects
- Thomas Wilson • Reading the Analects in the Sage’s Courtyard: A Modern Diner’s Guide to an Ancient Feast
- Sébastien Billioud and Vincent Goossaert • Confucius and his Texts: A Century of Crisis and Reinventions
- Yuming He • Talking Back to the Master: Play and Subversion in Entertainment Uses of theAnalects
- Henry Rosemont Jr. • On “New Confucianism”
- Sam Ho • Confucius on Film: Toward a Confucian Aesthetic
The choice of Leys’s translation — which consciously renders the text in modern, accessible language — may make sense in light of the Nylan’s objective in assembling this range of interpretive essays, which collectively “suggest that the Confucius we thought we knew is not the Kongzi of record and that this Kongzi is a protean figure given to rapid change and continual reevaluation.”
