The Songs of the South: An Anthology of Ancient Chinese Poems by Qu Yuan and Other Poets

The Songs of the South: An Anthology of Ancient Chinese Poems by Qu Yuan and Other Poets, translated and edited by David Hawkes, Penguin Classics, 1985, originally Clarendon Press, 1959, is the standard scholarly translation of the Chuci, the Warring States Chu anthology traditionally associated with Qu Yuan, with Hawkes's extensive scholarly introduction on Chu religion, the shamanic practice debate over the poems' idiom, and the Xiang river goddesses. Its strength is that it remains the standard English translation of this corpus, from a leading sinologist's scholarly introduction and apparatus. Its limit, stated as a scope note, is that it covers Chu religion and the Chuci corpus as its own named subject; the separate Qu Yuan legend and Dragon Boat Festival material appearing in the same passage are addressed only as part of that same scholarly introduction, not as this book's central argument.