Hailed recently as the greatest translator of Asian Literature ever to have lived, Arthur Waley (1889-1966) had an immeasurable influence on Western perceptions of Asia and on the development of Asian studies in the West. Waley was the single most important force in creating what the English-speaking public understood to be Japanese literature with his popular and critically acclaimed translations of Japanese poetry, no plays and the celebrated 11th-century court romance The Tale of Genji. This study of Waley and his Japanese translations provides a provocative examination of Waley's contribution to 20th-century English literature and culture. top graduate of Rugby and Cambridge and a younger member of the Bloomsbury Group. He examines how the social contexts influenced Waley's work and he further locates Waley's Japanese translations within the political contexts of the Japonism movement, British socialism and imperialism and the development of Japanese studies in England. How a cult of things Japanese in the early modern period in Britain led to the emergence of one of the 20th century's most important translators is an interesting story in itself.

This book employs actor-network theory (ANT) to explore the making of the English translation of a work of Chinese canonical fiction, Journey to the West, demonstrating how ANT, as applied to Translation Studies, can contribute to a richer understanding of the translation process. The volume builds on previous research to apply ANT theory to translation studies by looking in-depth at a single work, highlighting the unique factors underpinning the making of Monkey, Arthur Waley’s English translation of the Chinese classic Journey to the West, which make the work an ideal candidate for showing ANT theory in practice in translation. Luo uses an in-depth exploration of the work to examine the ways in which both human and nonhuman translation actors and agents interact in different ways in the publication of this translation, showcasing them as dynamic, changing, and active participants whose roles shifted over the course of the translation process, rather than as fixed entities as traditionally categorized in existing research. The book moves beyond a descriptive account of an ANT-based case study toward offering a systematic theoretical and methodological framework of ANT-based translation studies, using the conclusions drawn from its application to a single work to suggest a way forward for applying ANT in translation production on a wider scale. This book will be of interest to scholars in translation studies, sociology, and comparative literature, particularly those interested in actor-network theory or network studies and their application to related disciplinary fields.

Joseph R. Allen's new edition of The Book of Songs restores Arthur Waley's definitive English translations to the original order and structure of the two-thousand-year-old Chinese text. One of the five Confucian classics, The Book of Songs is the oldest collection of poetry in world literature and the finest treasure of traditional songs that antiquity has left us. Arthur Waley's translations, now supplemented by fifteen new translations by Allen, are superb; the songs speak to us across millennia with remarkable directness and power. Where the other Confucian classics treat "outward things, deeds, moral precepts, the way the world works", Stephen Owen tells us in his foreword, The Book of Songs is "the Classic of the human heart and the human mind".