Description: This book explores enduring narratives about Confucius, shedding light on his role as a symbol of cultural ideals and a fulcrum of ideological debates across eras.
Review Quotes: In an era when pseudo-efficiency and a hyper-focus on fleeting impressions reign supreme, Wai-yee Li's The Confucius Chronicles reminds us of the delicious pleasures to be experienced not only from "slow reading," but also from "super-slow reading," by which one moves from a single passage both vertically in time and horizontally across roughly contemporaneous texts, savoring associations by turns obvious and subtle. Pieties are out. Instead, we find her romp through the centuries. Meanwhile, the Kongzi of the collective imagination comes alive, as we see him by turns excoriated, admired, and co-opted by all manner of would-be claimants to the role of sage, including Han Fei and Li Zhi. This book is a triumph: a teaching text that shows how much we all have to learn!--Michael Nylan, author of The Chinese Pleasure Book