Contents: Pilgrim Legge and the journey to the West, 1870-1874 -- Professor Legge at Oxford University, 1875-1876 -- Heretic Legge : relating Confucianism and Christianity, 1877-1878 -- Decipherer Legge : finding the Sacred in the Chinese classics, 1879-1880 -- Comparativist Legge : describing and comparing the religions of China, 1880- 1882 -- Translator Legge : closing the Confucian Canon, 1882-1885 -- Ancestor Legge : translating Buddhism and Daoism, 1886-1892 -- Teacher Legge : upholding the Whole Duty of Man, 1893-1897.

"In this study, Norman J. Girardot focuses on James Legge (1815-1897), one of the most important nineteenth-century figures in the cultural exchange between China and the West. A translator-transformer of Chinese texts, Legge was a pioneering cross-cultural pilgrim within missionary circles in China and within the academic world of Oxford University. By tracing Legge's career and his close association with Max Muller (1823-1900), Girardot elegantly brings a biographically embodied approach to the intellectual history of two important aspects of the emergent "human sciences" at the end of the nineteenth century: sinology and comparative religions."--Jacket.