Reconstructing the Classic through Multiple Lenses: A Comparative Study of Four Late Nineteenth-Century English Translations of Guan Ju

As the opening poem of the Zhou Nan section in the Airs of the States (Guofeng) of the Shijing (Classic of Poetry), Guan Ju is not only a foundational work of classical Chinese poetry but also a central text in Western Sinological translation and scholarship. This article focuses on the English translation practices of three representative Sinologists of the late nineteenth century: James Legge, William Jennings, and Clement Francis Romilly Allen. Through a close reading of Legge’s two distinct versions of 1871 and 1876, alongside Jennings’s and Allen’s translations of 1891, this study examines the divergences in the translators’ cultural positions, aesthetic orientations, and translation strategies. It finds that Legge’s two renderings trace a shift from scholarly prose toward a return to metrical form, reflecting his sustained negotiation between the doctrinal weight of the classics and the artistry of poetry; Jennings and Allen, by contrast, develop distinctive approaches to versification and the transference of imagery. By comparing these four texts, the article seeks to illuminate the tension between “fidelity to truth” and “fidelity to beauty” in nineteenth-century Sinological translation, to analyze how the translator’s identity intervenes in the cross-cultural interpretation of a canonical text, and to show how these renderings register a broader Western shift in the understanding of Chinese culture from curiosity to scholarly scrutiny.