https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2639-8710
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Weiya Zhao, Fantastic Creatures of the Mountains and Seas: A Chinese Classic, By Jiankun Sun, Siyu Chen, Literature and Theology, Volume 37, Issue 3, September 2023, Pages 284–286, https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frad002
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A new English translation of The Classic of Mountains and Seas comes out roughly 20 years after Anne Birrell’s first (and only complete) English translation in 1999, a Penguin Classic, and Richard E. Strassberg’s 2002 illustration-oriented translation. Compared with its relatively scholarly and authoritative predecessors, ‘the newly translated bestiary’ targets ‘fans of fantastic beasts everywhere’ (Nell Keep, 2021). The Classic of Mountains and Seas, also known as Shanhaijing in Chinese, is considered by scholars to have been written in the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BC) of ancient China. It is at once the geography of an ancient world, a bestiary of mythical creatures, and a book of cultural and medicinal lore. In the 1950s, Henriette Mertz, a controversial American scholar, went so far to propose that an account in Shanhaijing described visits to the American continent. Now scholars generally confirm the authenticity of the records in the Mountains Classic of the book, while holding that the other volumes deal with an imaginary world (Lianshan Chen, 2021).
