In this little book, Confucian scholar and philosopher Henry Rosemont, Jr. has summarized forty years of experience studying, translating, and teaching the Analects. For essential cross-referencing of textual passages in differing translations, Rosemont provides tables of variant spellings of Chinese terms, a finding list for students named in the text, a concordance of key philosophical and religious terms, and an annotated bibliography to guide the reader’s further studies and reflections on the text.
The beauty of this work is that, unlike many traditional lengthy and minutely detailed texts addressed to scholars, Rosemont’s A Reader’s Companion to the Confucian Analects is simple in style, clear and concise, and interesting in its own right.
This marvelous little book describes itself as a ‘preface or prolegomena’ to the Analects, but it is much more than that. Rosemont invites readers to consider the text both as a window into Classical China and a mirror into ourselves, to deepen our self-knowledge and continue the spiritual task of self-cultivation.
[A Reader’s Companion to the Confucian Analects] is aimed at situating the reader with no experience of Chinese texts, enabling them to understand the unique style, concepts, and central issues of the Analects.
