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The Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic calls for and applies a new model of comparative literature - one that, instead of taking for granted the commensurability of traditions and texts, gives incompatibility and contradiction their due. Exposing contemporary literary theory to the risks of ancient Chinese literature (and vice versa), this book considers a linked series of case studies. To what degree does the translation between languages and texts that we call comparative literature depend on allegory or translation within a single text or language? The author offers an important, new perspective on the reading of the Shih-ching or Book of Odes and the question of allegory and metaphor in the Chinese poetic tradition.
This first paperback edition of a renowned collection of essays by noted scholar of Chinese history and philosophy Tu Wei-ming includes a new introductory essay by Robert Cummings Neville, Dean of
Chinese empires were established by force of arms, but sustained by religious rites and intellectual theory. The four centuries from 206 BC to AD 220 witnessed major changes in the state cults and the concepts of monarchy, while various techniques of divination were used to forecast the future or to solve immediate problems. Michael Loewe examines these changes and the links between religion and statecraft. While both mythology and the traditions nurtured by the learned affected the concept and practice of monarchy throughout the period, the political and social weaknesses of the last century of Han rule bring into question the success that was achieved by the imperial ideal. Nevertheless, that ideal and its institutions were of prime importance for the understanding of Han times and for the influence they exercised on China's later dynasties.
A study of Sung Chinese historical consciousness, this is the first comprehensive English work on the subject. It presents "new and multiple" as the key ideas for interpretation. Eleven essays by leading Sung scholars in the U.S., Germany, Japan and Taiwan show that there were important developments in both Sung senses of the past and Sung historiography: from conservatism to historical analogy to new worldviews (Ch'ing-li new policy and Chu His's tao-hsueh), the Sung sought to redefine the human past. The Sung also created or refined the writing of local, universal and genealogical histories, and brought about new visions of China's past.
First published in 1966, and now available once more, this pioneering work examines the relationship between the Chinese civil and military authorities and the British trading community in Guangdong province on the eve of the Taiping Rebellion--one of the most calamitous events in Chinese history. The book explores the various factors that led to the progression of rebellion and the inevitability of revolution.
"A vertitable feast of concise, useful, reliable, and up-to-dateinformation (all prepared by top scholars in the field), Nienhauser's now two-volumetitle stands alone as THE standard reference work for the study of traditionalChinese literature. Nothing like it has ever been published." --Choice The second volume to The Indiana Companion to TraditionalChinese Literature is both a supplement and an update to the original volume. VolumeII includes over 60 new entries on famous writers, works, and genres of traditionalChinese literature, followed by an extensive bibliographic update (1985-1997) ofeditions, translations, and studies (primarily in English, Chinese, Japanese, French, and German) for the 500+ entries of Volume I.
This study offers an interpretation of the origins of the T'ang-Sung intellectual tradition.
Modern Chinese painting embodies the constant renewal and reinvigorations of Chinese civilization amidst rebellions, reforms, and revolutions, even if the process may appear confusing and bewildering. It also demonstrates the persistence of tradition and limits of continuities and changes in modern Chinese cluture. Most significantly, it compels us to ask several important questions in the study of modern Chinese culture: How extensively can cultural tradition be re-interpreted before it is subverted? At what point is creative re-invention an act of betrayal of tradition? How has selective borrowing from Chinese tradition and foreign cultrue enabled modern Chinese artists to sustain themselves in the modern world? By focusing on the art of Huang Pin-hung (1865-1955), particularly his late work, this book attempts to provide some answers to these questions.
Relations between Inner Asian nomads and Chinese are a continuous theme throughout Chinese history. By investigating the formation of nomadic cultures, by analyzing the evolution of patterns of interaction along China's frontiers, and by exploring how this interaction was recorded in historiography, this looks at the origins of the cultural and political tensions between these two civilizations through the first millennium BC. The main purpose of the book is to analyze ethnic, cultural, and political frontiers between nomads and Chinese in the historical contexts that led to their formation, and to look at cultural perceptions of 'others' as a function of the same historical process. Based on both archaeological and textual sources, this 2002 book also introduces a new methodological approach to Chinese frontier history, which combines extensive factual data with a careful scrutiny of the motives, methods, and general conception of history that informed the Chinese historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien.