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Powerful Relations
The realignment of the Chinese social order that took place over the course of the Sung dynasty set the pattern for Chinese society throughout most of the later imperial era. This study examines that realignment from the perspective of specific Sung families, using data on two groups of Sung elites--the grand councilors who led the bureaucracy and locally prominent gentlemen in Wu-chou (in modern Chekiang). By analyzing kinship relationships, Beverly Bossler demonstrates the importance of family relations to the establishment and perpetuation of social status locally and in the capital. She shows how social position was measured and acted upon, how status shaped personal relationships (and vice versa), and how both status and personal relationships conditioned—and were conditioned by—political success. Finally, in a contribution to the ongoing discussion of localism in the Sung, Bossler details the varied networks that connected the local elite to the capital and elsewhere.
Time Dependent Constitutive Behavior and Fracture/Failure Processes, Volume 3
This the third volume of six from the Annual Conference of the Society for Experimental Mechanics, 2010, brings together 56 chapters on Time-Dependent Constitutive Fracture and Failure. It presents early findings from experimental and computational investigations on Time Dependent Materials including contributions on Thermal and Mechanical Characterization, Coupled Experimental and Computational Analysis of Fracture Path Selection, Procedures for Mixed Mode Fracture Testing of Bonded Beams, and Experimental Study of Voids in High Strength Aluminum Alloys.
‘This Culture of Ours’
This book traces the shared culture of the Chinese elite from the seventh to the twelfth centuries. The early T'ang definition of 'This Culture of Ours' combined literary and scholarly traditions from the previous five centuries. The late Sung Neo-Confucian movement challenged that definition. The author argues that the Tang-Sung transition is best understood as a transition from a literary view of culture - in which literary accomplishment and mastery of traditional forms were regarded as essential - to the ethical orientation of Neo-Confucianism, in which the cultivation of one's innate moral ability was regarded as the goal of learning. The author shows that this transformation paralleled the collapse of the T'ang order and the restoration of a centralized empire under the Sung, underscoring the connection between elite formation and political institutions.
Tang Transformation Texts
This is the most comprehensive study of pien-wen (“transformation texts” i.e., tales of metamorphosis) in any language since the manuscripts were discovered at the beginning of the 20th century in a remote cave complex in northwest China. They are the earliest written vernacular narratives in China and are thus extremely important in the history of Chinese language and literature. Numerous scholarly controversies have surrounded the study of the texts in the last three quarters of a century; this volume seeks to resolve some of them—the extent, origins, and formal characteristics of the texts, the meaning of pien wen, the identity of the authors who composed these popular narratives and the scribes who copied them, the relationship of the texts to oral performance, and the reasons for the apparently sudden demise of the genre around the beginning of the Sung dynasty. This is a multi-disciplinary study that integrates findings from religious, literary, linguistic, sociological, and historical materials, carried out with intellectual rigor. It includes an extensive bibliography of relevant sources in many languages.
A History of Chinese Calligraphy
Chinese calligraphy has been an independent visual art form for thousands of years. Its wonderful aesthetics has inspired the art of Chinese painting since the second century B.C. Before pen and pencil were introduced to China, millions practiced the art of writing in ink. In the twentieth century, the art of calligraphy has not only fascinated modern Chinese who are part of this continuous tradition, but has also captured the interest and imagination of the world. This is the first proper history of Chinese calligraphy in English.
