Our ideas about Confucius come from the stories told about him. He often appears as the great sage of ancient China, handing down timeless moral precepts to his disciples and to posterity. Yet over the course of twenty-five centuries, Confucius has meant many different things to different people, representing varied views on political order, ethical behavior, and personal well-being.

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. Wai-yee Li translates and provides commentary on a wide range of key texts, examining how Confucius’s legacy was interpreted in different historical moments. Beginning with the canonical account by the historian Sima Qian, she canvasses Daoist and Legalist writings from the Warring States, a ballad about a homicidal Confucius from the Tang dynasty, an eighteenth-century anthology of jokes, modern writers such as Lu Xun, and contemporary rap music, among others. Focusing on how these stories are told, Li identifies continuities, ruptures, and unexpected connections in the representations of Confucius and considers the questions they raise. Suitable for a range of courses, this book offers new ways to understand Chinese cultural and intellectual history through Confucius and his transformations.

About the Author

Wai-yee Li is the 1879 Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University. Her recent books include The Peach Blossom Fan (2024), Gender and Friendship in Chinese Literature (2024), A Topsy-Turvy World: Short Plays and Farces from the Ming and Qing Dynasties (Columbia, 2023), and The Promise and Peril of Things: Literature and Material Culture in Late Imperial China (Columbia, 2022).

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