Writing and Authority in Early China

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Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438410743
Total Pages : 556 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing and Authority in Early China by : Mark Edward Lewis

Download or read book Writing and Authority in Early China written by Mark Edward Lewis and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1999-03-18 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the evolving uses of writing to command assent and obedience in early China, an evolution that culminated in the establishment of a textual canon as the foundation of imperial authority. Its central theme is the emergence of this body of writings as the textual double of the state, and of the text-based sage as the double of the ruler. The book examines the full range of writings employed in early China, such as divinatory records, written communications with ancestors, government documents, the collective writings of philosophical and textual traditions, speeches attributed to historical figures, chronicles, verse anthologies, commentaries, and encyclopedic compendia. Lewis shows how these writings served to administer populations, control officials, form new social groups, invent new models of authority, and create an artificial language whose mastery generated power and whose graphs became potent objects. Writing and Authority in Early China traces the enterprise of creating a parallel reality within texts that depicted the entire world. These texts provided models for the invention of a world empire, and one version ultimately became the first state canon of imperial China. This canon served to perpetuate the dream and the reality of the imperial system across the centuries.

ART MYTH AND RITUAL P

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674029402
Total Pages : 157 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis ART MYTH AND RITUAL P by : Kwang-chih CHANG

Download or read book ART MYTH AND RITUAL P written by Kwang-chih CHANG and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading scholar in the United States on Chinese archaeology challenges long-standing conceptions of the rise of political authority in ancient China. Questioning Marx's concept of an "Asiatic" mode of production, Wittfogel's "hydraulic hypothesis," and cultural-materialist theories on the importance of technology, K. C. Chang builds an impressive counterargument, one which ranges widely from recent archaeological discoveries to studies of mythology, ancient Chinese poetry, and the iconography of Shang food vessels.

Text and Ritual in Early China

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Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295800313
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (958 download)

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Book Synopsis Text and Ritual in Early China by : Martin Kern

Download or read book Text and Ritual in Early China written by Martin Kern and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Text and Ritual in Early China, leading scholars of ancient Chinese history, literature, religion, and archaeology consider the presence and use of texts in religious and political ritual. Through balanced attention to both the received literary tradition and the wide range of recently excavated artifacts, manuscripts, and inscriptions, their combined efforts reveal the rich and multilayered interplay of textual composition and ritual performance. Drawn across disciplinary boundaries, the resulting picture illuminates two of the defining features of early Chinese culture and advances new insights into their sumptuous complexity. Beginning with a substantial introduction to the conceptual and thematic issues explored in succeeding chapters, Text and Ritual in Early China is anchored by essays on early Chinese cultural history and ritual display (Michael Nylan) and the nature of its textuality (William G. Boltz). This twofold approach sets the stage for studies of the E Jun Qi metal tallies (Lothar von Falkenhausen), the Gongyang commentary to The Spring and Autumn Annals (Joachim Gentz), the early history of The Book of Odes (Martin Kern), moral remonstration in historiography (David Schaberg), the “Liming” manuscript text unearthed at Mawangdui (Mark Csikszentmihalyi), and Eastern Han commemorative stele inscriptions (K. E. Brashier). The scholarly originality of these essays rests firmly on their authors’ control over ancient sources, newly excavated materials, and modern scholarship across all major Sinological languages. The extensive bibliography is in itself a valuable and reliable reference resource. This important work will be required reading for scholars of Chinese history, language, literature, philosophy, religion, art history, and archaeology.

The Construction of Space in Early China

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Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 0791482499
Total Pages : 514 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (914 download)

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Book Synopsis The Construction of Space in Early China by : Mark Edward Lewis

Download or read book The Construction of Space in Early China written by Mark Edward Lewis and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the formation of the Chinese empire through its reorganization and reinterpretation of its basic spatial units: the human body, the household, the city, the region, and the world. The central theme of the book is the way all these forms of ordered space were reshaped by the project of unification and how, at the same time, that unification was constrained and limited by the necessary survival of the units on which it was based. Consequently, as Mark Edward Lewis shows, each level of spatial organization could achieve order and meaning only within an encompassing, superior whole: the body within the household, the household within the lineage and state, the city within the region, and the region within the world empire, while each level still contained within itself the smaller units from which it was formed. The unity that was the empire's highest goal avoided collapse back into the original chaos of nondistinction only by preserving within itself the very divisions on the basis of family or region that it claimed to transcend.

Sanctioned Violence in Early China

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Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 9780791400760
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis Sanctioned Violence in Early China by : Mark Edward Lewis

Download or read book Sanctioned Violence in Early China written by Mark Edward Lewis and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides new insight into the creation of the Chinese empire by examining the changing forms of permitted violence--warfare, hunting, sacrifice, punishments, and vengeance. It analyzes the interlinked evolution of these violent practices to reveal changes in the nature of political authority, in the basic units of social organization, and in the fundamental commitments of the ruling elite. The work offers a new interpretation of the changes that underlay the transformation of the Chinese polity from a league of city states dominated by aristocratic lineages to a unified, territorial state controlled by a supreme autocrat and his agents. In addition, it shows how a new pattern of violence was rationalized and how the Chinese of the period incorporated their ideas about violence into the myths and proto-scientific theories that provided historical and natural prototypes for the imperial state.

Writing and Authority in Early China

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Author :
Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 9780791441145
Total Pages : 560 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (411 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing and Authority in Early China by : Mark Edward Lewis

Download or read book Writing and Authority in Early China written by Mark Edward Lewis and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1999-03-18 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the evolving uses of writing to command assent and obedience in early China, an evolution that culminated in the establishment of a textual canon as the foundation of imperial authority. Its central theme is the emergence of this body of writings as the textual double of the state, and of the text-based sage as the double of the ruler. The book examines the full range of writings employed in early China, such as divinatory records, written communications with ancestors, government documents, the collective writings of philosophical and textual traditions, speeches attributed to historical figures, chronicles, verse anthologies, commentaries, and encyclopedic compendia. Lewis shows how these writings served to administer populations, control officials, form new social groups, invent new models of authority, and create an artificial language whose master generated power and whose graphs became potent objects.

The Flood Myths of Early China

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Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 0791482227
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (914 download)

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Book Synopsis The Flood Myths of Early China by : Mark Edward Lewis

Download or read book The Flood Myths of Early China written by Mark Edward Lewis and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early Chinese ideas about the construction of an ordered human space received narrative form in a set of stories dealing with the rescue of the world and its inhabitants from a universal flood. This book demonstrates how early Chinese stories of the re-creation of the world from a watery chaos provided principles underlying such fundamental units as the state, lineage, the married couple, and even the human body. These myths also supplied a charter for the major political and social institutions of Warring States (481–221 BC) and early imperial (220 BC–AD 220) China. In some versions of the tales, the flood was triggered by rebellion, while other versions linked the taming of the flood with the creation of the institution of a lineage, and still others linked the taming to the process in which the divided principles of the masculine and the feminine were joined in the married couple to produce an ordered household. While availing themselves of earlier stories and of central religious rituals of the period, these myths transformed earlier divinities or animal spirits into rulers or ministers and provided both etiologies and legitimation for the emerging political and social institutions that culminated in the creation of a unitary empire.

Writing and the Ancient State

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107028124
Total Pages : 435 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing and the Ancient State by : Haicheng Wang

Download or read book Writing and the Ancient State written by Haicheng Wang and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-12 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing and the Ancient State is a comparative study of the use of writing to create and maintain order in early states.

Writing and Literacy in Early China

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Publisher : University of Washington Press
ISBN 13 : 0295804505
Total Pages : 480 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (958 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing and Literacy in Early China by : Feng Li

Download or read book Writing and Literacy in Early China written by Feng Li and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The emergence and spread of literacy in ancient human society an important topic for all who study the ancient world, and the development of written Chinese is of particular interest, as modern Chinese orthography preserves logographic principles shared by its most ancient forms, making it unique among all present-day writing systems. In the past three decades, the discovery of previously unknown texts dating to the third century BCE and earlier, as well as older versions of known texts, has revolutionized the study of early Chinese writing. The long-term continuity and stability of the Chinese written language allow for this detailed study of the role literacy played in early civilization. The contributors to Writing and Literacy in Early China inquire into modes of manuscript production, the purposes for which texts were produced, and the ways in which they were actually used. By carefully evaluating current evidence and offering groundbreaking new interpretations, the book illuminates the nature of literacy for scribes and readers.

Rhetoric in Ancient China, Fifth to Third Century B.C.E

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Publisher : Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 1643362909
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (433 download)

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Book Synopsis Rhetoric in Ancient China, Fifth to Third Century B.C.E by : Xing Lu

Download or read book Rhetoric in Ancient China, Fifth to Third Century B.C.E written by Xing Lu and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2022-03-10 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Xing Lu examines language, art, persuasion, and argumentation in ancient China and offers a detailed and authentic account of ancient Chinese rhetorical theories and practices within the society's philosophical, political, cultural, and linguistic contexts. She focuses on the works of five schools of thought and ten well-known Chinese thinkers from Confucius to Han Feizi to the the Later Mohists. Lu identifies seven key Chinese terms pertaining to speech, language, persuasion, and argumentation as they appeared in these original texts, selecting ming bian as the linchpin for the Chinese conceptual term of rhetorical studies. Lu compares Chinese rhetorical perspectives with those of the ancient Greeks, illustrating that the Greeks and the Chinese shared a view of rhetoric as an ethical enterprise and of speech as a rational and psychological activity. The two traditions differed, however, in their rhetorical education, sense of rationality, perceptions of the role of language, approach to the treatment and study of rhetoric, and expression of emotions. Lu also links ancient Chinese rhetorical perspectives with contemporary Chinese interpersonal and political communication behavior and offers suggestions for a multicultural rhetoric that recognizes both culturally specific and transcultural elements of human communication.

The Empire of the Text

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Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 9780847687398
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (873 download)

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Book Synopsis The Empire of the Text by : Christopher Leigh Connery

Download or read book The Empire of the Text written by Christopher Leigh Connery and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1998 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique study argues that in the Qin-Han period, there arose in China a regime of textual authority_one that overlapped but did not coincide with imperial authority. Drawing on a wide range of research and theory, Connery makes an original contribution to the analysis of early imperial elite culture, particularly in the fields of literature and linguistics, intellectual, and institutional history. The author provides new contexts for thinking about canonization and textual transmission systems, an innovative framework for analysis and discussion of the early imperial elite, a socio-ideological exploration of one strand of late Han 'Confucian' thought, and a critique of the concepts of subjectivity and the 'birth of lyricism' in China.

Social Memory and State Formation in Early China

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107141451
Total Pages : 587 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Social Memory and State Formation in Early China by : Min Li

Download or read book Social Memory and State Formation in Early China written by Min Li and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-24 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking book on the archaeology of power, knowledge, social memory, and the emergence of classical tradition in early China.

Bureaucracy and the State in Early China

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 0521884470
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (218 download)

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Book Synopsis Bureaucracy and the State in Early China by : Feng Li

Download or read book Bureaucracy and the State in Early China written by Feng Li and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-11 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ook redefines the bureaucracy of Ancient Chinese society during the Western Zhou period. The analysis is based on inscriptions of royal edicts from the period carved into bronze vessels. The inscriptions clarify the political and social construction of the Western Zhou and the ways in which it exercised its authority.

The Cloudy Mirror

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Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 9780791426555
Total Pages : 252 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (265 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cloudy Mirror by : Stephen W. Durrant

Download or read book The Cloudy Mirror written by Stephen W. Durrant and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sima Qian's writings have influenced the Chinese for over 2,000 years and still serve as a fiscal source of historical information about China.

Art & Political Expression in Early China

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780300047677
Total Pages : 438 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (476 download)

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Book Synopsis Art & Political Expression in Early China by : Martin Joseph Powers

Download or read book Art & Political Expression in Early China written by Martin Joseph Powers and published by . This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In This path breaking book Martin J. Powers examines the art and politics of Han dynasty (206 B. C. - A.D. 220) and show that both were shaped by the rise of an educated, non aristocratic public-the Confucian literati - that questioned the authority of the rich and royal at all levels. By considering the design and construction of local tombs and shrines, their mural schemes, subject matter, and style, the author distinguishes three major traditions of taste and places each tradition within a narrative of political rivalries in northeast China.

The Early Chinese Empires

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674265424
Total Pages : 334 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis The Early Chinese Empires by : Mark Edward Lewis

Download or read book The Early Chinese Empires written by Mark Edward Lewis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-30 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 221 BC, the First Emperor of Qin unified the lands that would become the heart of a Chinese empire. Though forged by conquest, this vast domain depended for its political survival on a fundamental reshaping of Chinese culture. With this informative book, we are present at the creation of an ancient imperial order whose major features would endure for two millennia. The Qin and Han constitute the “classical period” of Chinese history—a role played by the Greeks and Romans in the West. Mark Edward Lewis highlights the key challenges faced by the court officials and scholars who set about governing an empire of such scale and diversity of peoples. He traces the drastic measures taken to transcend, without eliminating, these regional differences: the invention of the emperor as the divine embodiment of the state; the establishment of a common script for communication and a state-sponsored canon for the propagation of Confucian ideals; the flourishing of the great families, whose domination of local society rested on wealth, landholding, and elaborate kinship structures; the demilitarization of the interior; and the impact of non-Chinese warrior-nomads in setting the boundaries of an emerging Chinese identity. The first of a six-volume series on the history of imperial China, The Early Chinese Empires illuminates many formative events in China’s long history of imperialism—events whose residual influence can still be discerned today.

Empires of Ancient Eurasia

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107114969
Total Pages : 317 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Empires of Ancient Eurasia by : Craig Benjamin

Download or read book Empires of Ancient Eurasia written by Craig Benjamin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduces a crucial period of world history when the vast exchange network of the Silk Roads connected most of Eurasia.