Selected Translations from The Book of Songs

The Book of Songs is the earliest collection of poetry in China, containing 305 poems from about five hundred years between the early Western Zhou and the mid-Spring and Autumn period. It was originally called The Poems and was elevated to classic status in the Han dynasty, hence the name The Book of Songs. The whole work is divided by music and region into the Feng, Ya, and Song sections: the Guofeng are mostly regional folk songs; the Xiaoya and Daya consist mainly of pieces for court gatherings and banquets and of political satire; the Song are sacrificial hymns for ancestral temples. This book is one volume in the Classical Poetry Masters series from Zhonghua Book Company, translated and annotated by the senior literary and historical scholar Zhou Zhenfu and compiled and selected by Xu Minghui. From the 305 poems it selects 179 of the most representative works: 104 from the Guofeng, 62 from the Daya and Xiaoya, and 13 from the Song. Each poem begins with an interpretive note explaining the background of composition, main theme, technique, and artistic features and identifying relevant names, places, and institutions; there follow annotations clarifying words and allusions, with pinyin for rare characters and paraphrases of difficult lines; finally, each line is given a vernacular translation, turning archaic classical Chinese into modern Chinese that can be read aloud. A preface introduces the formation, classification, and history of scholarship on The Book of Songs. Balancing scholarship and readability, the book is a convenient introductory selection for newcomers to The Book of Songs and for lovers of classical poetry.