Translation of the Gongyang and Guliang Commentaries to Spring and Autumn Annals: An Early Chinese Text

FAIN: RQ-279816-21

Connecticut College (New London, CT 06320-4125)
Sarah Ann Queen (Project Director: December 2020 to present)

Preparation for print and digital publication of an edition and annotated translation of two commentaries to The Spring and Autumn Annals from classical Chinese, written by Confucius (551–479 BCE). (24 months)

Gongyang and Guliang, two of the world’s earliest written commentaries to the Spring and Autumn Annals, have exerted tremendous influence on Chinese political and intellectual life for two millennia. Instrumental in elevating Confucius to the status of one of the greatest sages of Chinese culture, they envision him as author of the Annals, who bequeathed to future generations this court chronicle containing a hidden and esoteric blueprint for world salvation. These commentaries extract from Annals patterns and rules by which to reconstruct the teachings of the True Sage. With their rigorous analytic methodology, they fashion an intricate hermeneutic as well as the world’s first systematic historiography. Through the first scholarly English translation, side-by-side with the original, accompanied by rich introductory and explanatory material, we will make these works readily available for study by early China scholars, comparatists, political scientists, philosophers, and historians.