Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan左傳
Commentary on the "Spring and Autumn Annals"
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Winner of the Patrick D. Hanan Book Prize for Translation (China and Inner Asia), sponsored by the Association for Asian Studies
Zuo Tradition (Zuozhuan; sometimes called The Zuo Commentary) is China’s first great work of history. It consists of two interwoven texts - the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu, a terse annalistic record) and a vast web of narratives and speeches that add context and interpretation to the Annals. Completed by about 300 BCE, it is the longest and one of the most difficult texts surviving from pre-imperial times. It has been as important to the foundation and preservation of Chinese culture as the historical books of the Hebrew Bible have been to the Jewish and Christian traditions. It has shaped notions of history, justice, and the significance of human action in the Chinese tradition perhaps more so than any comparable work of Latin or Greek historiography has done to Western civilization. This translation, accompanied by the original text, an introduction, and annotations, will finally make Zuozhuan accessible to all.
Stephen Durrant
Translated by
Stephen Durrant is professor emeritus of Chinese language and literature, University of Oregon. He is the author of The Cloudy Mirror: Tension and Conflict in the Writings of Sima Qian (State University of New York Press, 1995); coauthor of The Siren and the Sage: Knowledge and Wisdom in Ancient Greece and China (Cassell, 2000); cotranslator of Zuo Traditions / Zuozhuan (University of Washington Press, 2017); and coeditor of Early China / Ancient Greece: Thinking through Comparisons (State University of New York Press, 2002).
David Schaberg
Translated by
David Schaberg is professor of Asian languages and culture at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography (Harvard, 2002); and cotranslator of Zuo Traditions / Zuozhuan 左傳 (UWP, 2017) and The Zuo Tradition / Zuozhuan Reader: Selections from China's Earliest Narrative History (UWP, 2020).
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