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Sir William Jones, a Reader
William Jones
出版Oxford University Press, 1993
主題Biography & Autobiography / HistoricalLanguage Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / GeneralLanguage Arts & Disciplines / Study & TeachingPoetry / European / English, Irish, Scottish, WelshScience / Life Sciences / Botany
ISBN01956292809780195629286
URLhttp://books.google.com.hk/books?id=Nx6iTty65boC&hl=&source=gbs_api
註釋This Reader contains selected representative works of Sir William Jones (1746-94), the prominent British philologist, poet, translator, orientalist, jurist, and father of comparative studies. His works have not been published since a six-volume edition of 1799 and a thirteen-volume edition of 1807. Also, they have never been critically edited and annotated: this is the first volume of its kind. The Reader is organized in three major sections, each with its own introduction: Literature; Language and Linguistics; and Religion, Mythology, and Metaphysics. Each selection also has its own introductory headnote, suggesting a context for that work's composition and its value to current scholarship. At the end of the anthology, the editor provides a selected bibliography as well as a comprehensive index consisting of titles, places, subjects, and themes. As Jones's major writings were in literature, that section is the longest and is subdivided into poetry, drama, and criticism. The section on poetry is a blend of the Classical, the European, the Indian, and the Persian. Several of these influenced the English Romantic poets in their hymns and odes. This section also includes Jones's translation of the entire Gita-Govinda of Jayadeva, the epic telling of the love story of Radha and Krishna. This is followed by a sub-section on drama which features the complete text of Kalidasa's Shakuntala, which intrigued Europe, particularly Goethe, and led to other translations of the play. The section on language and linguistics has five epoch-making essays or extracts from long essays, covering grammar, orthography, and comparative linguistics. The last section shows Jones's transcendence of Christianimperialism and appreciation of Eastern theologies and mythical beliefs. Extracts from essays on 'The Gods of Greece, Italy, and India' and on the Hindu zodiac show his knowledge of astrology, astronomy, and the divinities in three ancient civilizations, with references to their Egyptian and the Chinese counterparts. A friend and correspondent of Edmund Burke, Benjamin Franklin, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Samuel Johnson, Sir William Jones's work needs to be seen more clearly than it has been. This Reader fulfills that need.