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The Sword Or the Needle
Focusing on narratives about female knights-errant (xia) along thematic lines in Chinese literacy history, this text provides an overview of the narrative subgenre, the literary representation of gender and the particularities of the Chinese knight-errantry narrative.
Entangled Landscapes
The exchange of landscape practice between China and Europe from 1500–1800 is an important chapter in art history. While the material forms of the outcome of this exchange, like jardin anglo-chinoisand Européenerie are well documented, this book moves further to examine the role of the exchange in identity formation in early modern China and Europe. Proposing the new paradigm of “entangled landscapes”, drawing from the concept of “entangled histories”, this book looks at landscape design, cartography, literature, philosophy and material culture of the period. Challenging simplistic, binary treatments of the movements of “influences” between China and Europe, Entangled Landscapes reveals how landscape exchanges entailed complex processes of appropriation, crossover and transformation, through which Chinese and European identities were formed. Exploring these complex processes via three themes—empire building, mediators’ constraints, and aesthetic negotiations, this work breaks new ground in landscape and East-West studies. Interdisciplinary and revisionist in its thrust, it will also benefit scholars of history, human geography and postcolonial studies.
Th e Empress and the Heavenly Masters
Over twentyseven meters long, the Ordination Scroll of Empress Zhang (1493) is an important Ming Dynasty Daoist artifact from the San Diego Museum of Art's collection that records the imperial ordination of Empress Zhang (1470–1541), consort of the Ming Dynasty Hongzhi emperor (r. 1488–1505), by Zhang Xuanqing (d. 1509), the fortyseventh Heavenly Master of the Zhengyi institution. This book uncovers the history of imperial ordinations through a detailed examination of the scroll's transcriptions and the meticulouslypainted images of celestial beings, as well as the influences of the Daoist leaders known as the Zhengyi Heavenly Masters.
Age of Exploration
In the early twentieth century, Chinese intellectuals came to realize that Westerners surpassed them not only in knowledge of the world, but also in knowledge of China itself. A rising generation of Chinese scientists, engineers, and administrators was eager to address this state of affairs and began to retrace the footsteps of Western explorers who had crisscrossed China during the preceding century. The nine case studies assembled in this book show how a new cohort of professional Chinese explorers traveled, studied, appropriated, and reshaped national space from the 1920s to the 1950s. In some instances, the explorers drew directly from the fieldwork practices of their Western predecessor...
Reading for the Moral
Reassesses didacticism in seventeenth-century Chinese vernacular fiction and challenges the view that the late Ming was a notoriously immoral time. Reading for the Moral offers an innovative reassessment of the nature of moral representation and exemplarity in Chinese vernacular fiction. Maria Franca Sibau focuses on two little-studied story collections published at the end of the Ming dynasty, Exemplary Words for the World (Xingshi yan, 1632) and Bell in the Still Night (Qingye zhong, c. 1645). Far from being tediously moralistic tales, these stories of loyal ministers, filial children, chaste widows, and selfless friends provide a deeper understanding of the five cardinal relationships cen...
Rulin waishi and Cultural Transformation in Late Imperial China
Rulin waishi (The Unofficial History of the Scholars) is more than a landmark in the history of the Chinese novel. This eighteenth-century work, which was deeply embedded in the intellectual and literary discourses of its time, challenges the reader to come to grips with the mid-Qing debates over ritual and ritualism, and the construction of history, narrative, and lyricism. Wu Jingzi’s (1701–54) ironic portrait of literati life was unprecedented in its comprehensive treatment of the degeneration of mores, the predicaments of official institutions, and the Confucian elite’s futile struggle to reassert moral and cultural authority. Like many of his fellow literati, Wu found the vernacul...
Women and the Literary World in Early Modern China, 1580-1700
Exploring the works of key women writers within their cultural, artistic and socio-political contexts, this book considers changes in the perception of women in early modern China. The sixteenth century brought rapid developments in technology, commerce and the publishing industry that saw women emerging in new roles as both consumers and producers of culture. This book examines the place of women in the cultural elite and in society more generally, reconstructing examples of particular women’s personal experiences, and retracing the changing roles of women from the late Ming to the early Qing era (1580-1700). Providing rich detail of exceptionally fine, interesting and engaging literary works, this book opens fascinating new windows onto the lives, dreams, nightmares, anxieties and desires of the authors and the world out of which they emerged.
Confucianism
"Confucianism" presents the history and salient tenets of Confucian thought, and discusses its viability, from both a social and a philosophical point of view, in the modern world. Despite most of the major Confucian texts having been translated into English, there remains a surprising lack of straightforward textbooks on Confucian philosophy in any Western language. Those that do exist are often oriented from the point of view of Western philosophy - or, worse, a peculiar school of thought within Western philosophy - and advance correspondingly skewed interpretations of Confucianism. This book seeks to rectify this situation. It guides readers through the philosophies of the three major classical Confucians: Confucius (551-479 BCE), Mencius (372-289 BCE?) and Xunzi (fl. 3rd cent. BCE), and concludes with an overview of later Confucian revivals and the standing of Confucianism today.
Hua Yan (1682-1756) and the Making of the Artist in Early Modern China
Hua Yan (1682-1756) and the Making of the Artist in Early Modern China explores the relationships between the artist, local society, and artistic practice during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). Arranged as an investigation of the artist Hua Yan’s work at a pivotal moment in eighteenth-century society, this book considers his paintings and poetry in early eighteenth-century Hangzhou, mid-eighteenth-century Yangzhou, and finally their nineteenth-century afterlife in Shanghai. By investigating Hua Yan’s struggle as a marginalized artist—both at his time and in the canon of Chinese art—this study draws attention to the implications of seeing and being seen as an artist in early modern China.
That Wonderful Composite Called Author
Did East Asian literatures, ranging from bronze inscriptions to zazen treatises, lack a concept of authorship before their integration into classical modernity? The answer depends on how one defines the term author. Starting out with a critical review of recent theories of authorship, this edited volume distinguishes various author functions, which can be distributed among several individuals and need not be integrated into a single source of textual meaning. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean literary traditions cover the whole spectrum from 'weak' composite to 'strong' individual forms and concepts of authorship. Divisions on this scale can be equated with gradual differences in the range of self-articulation. Contributors are Roland Altenburger, Alexander Beecroft, Marion Eggert, Simone Müller, Christian Schwermann, and Raji Steineck.
