Court Culture and Literature in Early China

Court Culture and Literature in Early China PDF Author: David R. Knechtges
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
The studies brought together here focus upon the literary and cultural activity of the Chinese court during the Han and early medieval period. The first section concerns court literature in the Former Han and deals with the role of literature, especially poetry, at both the imperial and princely courts, including one study of the writings attributed to an imperial concubine, who used poetry to express her resentment at falling from the emperor's favour. The next section looks at a leading court writer of the Late Western Han dynasty, Yang Xiong, while the third part deals with the leading poetic genre of this period, the fu or rhapsody. These papers examine major themes such as praise, travel, dating and authenticity, and problems of translation. The volume concludes with two articles on food culture in early and medieval China.

Court Culture and Literature in Early China

Court Culture and Literature in Early China PDF Author: David R. Knechtges
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Get Book Here

Book Description
The studies brought together here focus upon the literary and cultural activity of the Chinese court during the Han and early medieval period. The first section concerns court literature in the Former Han and deals with the role of literature, especially poetry, at both the imperial and princely courts, including one study of the writings attributed to an imperial concubine, who used poetry to express her resentment at falling from the emperor's favour. The next section looks at a leading court writer of the Late Western Han dynasty, Yang Xiong, while the third part deals with the leading poetic genre of this period, the fu or rhapsody. These papers examine major themes such as praise, travel, dating and authenticity, and problems of translation. The volume concludes with two articles on food culture in early and medieval China.

Courtier and Commoner in Ancient China

Courtier and Commoner in Ancient China PDF Author: Gu Ban
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231083546
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Pan Ku's celebrated and influential History of the Former Han has been a model for dynastic history since its appearance in the first century A.D.Burton Watson has translated ten chapters from the biography section, including the lives of imperial princes, generals, officials, and some lesser figures.

The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature

The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature PDF Author: Kang-i Sun Chang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521855587
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 748

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Book Description
Stephen Owen is James Bryant Conant Professor of Chinese at Harvard University. --Book Jacket.

Picturing Heaven in Early China

Picturing Heaven in Early China PDF Author: Lillian Lan-ying Tseng
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684175097
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 479

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Book Description
Tian, or Heaven, had multiple meanings in early China. It had been used since the Western Zhou to indicate both the sky and the highest god, and later came to be regarded as a force driving the movement of the cosmos and as a home to deities and imaginary animals. By the Han dynasty, which saw an outpouring of visual materials depicting Heaven, the concept of Heaven encompassed an immortal realm to which humans could ascend after death. Using excavated materials, Lillian Tseng shows how Han artisans transformed various notions of Heaven—as the mandate, the fantasy, and the sky—into pictorial entities. The Han Heaven was not indicated by what the artisans looked at, but rather was suggested by what they looked into. Artisans attained the visibility of Heaven by appropriating and modifying related knowledge of cosmology, mythology, astronomy. Thus the depiction of Heaven in Han China reflected an interface of image and knowledge. By examining Heaven as depicted in ritual buildings, on household utensils, and in the embellishments of funerary settings, Tseng maintains that visibility can hold up a mirror to visuality; Heaven was culturally constructed and should be culturally reconstructed.

Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature (vol.I)

Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature (vol.I) PDF Author: David R. Knechtges
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004191275
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 802

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Book Description
The long-awaited, first Western-language reference guide, this work offers a wealth of information on writers, genres, literary schools and terms of the Chinese literary tradition from earliest times to the seventh century C.E.

Forming the Early Chinese Court

Forming the Early Chinese Court PDF Author: Luke Habberstad
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295742402
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Forming the Early Chinese Court builds on new directions in comparative studies of royal courts in the ancient world to present a pioneering study of early Chinese court culture. Rejecting divides between literary, political, and administrative texts, Luke Habberstad examines sources from the Qin, Western Han, and Xin periods (221 BCE–23 CE) for insights into court society and ritual, rank, the development of the bureaucracy, and the role of the emperor. These diverse sources show that a large, but not necessarily cohesive, body of courtiers drove the consolidation, distribution, and representation of power in court institutions. Forming the Early Chinese Court encourages us to see China’s imperial unification as a surprisingly idiosyncratic process that allowed different actors to stake claims in a world of increasing population, wealth, and power.

Chang'an 26 BCE

Chang'an 26 BCE PDF Author: Michael Nylan
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295806419
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 656

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Book Description
During the last two centuries BCE, the Western Han capital of Chang'an, near today's Xi'an in northwest China, outshone Augustan Rome in several ways while administering comparable numbers of imperial subjects and equally vast territories. At its grandest, during the last fifty years or so before the collapse of the dynasty in 9 CE, Chang�an boasted imperial libraries with thousands of documents on bamboo and silk in a city nearly three times the size of Rome and nearly four times larger than Alexandria. Many reforms instituted in this capital in ate Western Han substantially shaped not only the institutions of the Eastern Han (25�220 CE) but also the rest of imperial China until 1911. Although thousands of studies document imperial Rome�s glory, until now no book-length work in a Western language has been devoted to Han Chang�an, the reign of Emperor Chengdi (whose accomplishments rival those of Augustus and Hadrian), or the city's impressive library project (26-6 BCE), which ultimately produced the first state-sponsored versions of many of the classics and masterworks that we hold in our hands today. Chang�an 26 BCE addresses this deficiency, using as a focal point the reign of Emperor Chengdi (r. 33�7 bce), specifically the year in which the imperial library project began. This in-depth survey by some of the world�s best scholars, Chinese and Western, explores the built environment, sociopolitical transformations, and leading figures of Chang�an, making a strong case for the revision of historical assumptions about the two Han dynasties. A multidisciplinary volume representing a wealth of scholarly perspectives, the book draws on the established historical record and recent archaeological discoveries of thousands of tombs, building foundations, and remnants of walls and gates from Chang�an and its surrounding area.

Chinese Literature, Ancient and Classical

Chinese Literature, Ancient and Classical PDF Author: André Lévy
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253213655
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
André Lévy provides a "picture of Chinese literature of the past" that brilliantly illustrates the four great literary genres of China: the classics, prose, poetry, and the literature of entertainment. His discussion of approximately 120 vivid translations combines personal insights with innovative historical accounts in a genre-based approach that moves beyond the typical chronology of dynasties. Renowned scholar William H. Nienhauser, Jr., translated Lévy's work from the French and returned to the original Chinese for the texts. This informative, engaging, and eminently readable introduction to the three millennia of traditional Chinese literature is highly recommended for students and general readers.

China’s Imperial Past

China’s Imperial Past PDF Author: Charles O. Hucker
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804723534
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
A panoramic survey of the course of Chinese civilization from prehistory to 1850, when the old China began to give way

Literature

Literature PDF Author: David Damrosch
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470671904
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1789

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Book Description
LITERATURE A WORLD HISTORY An exploration of the history of the world’s literatures and the many varieties of literary expression Literature: A World Historyencompasses all the world’s major literary traditions, emphasizing the interrelationship of local and national cultures over time. Spanning global literature from the beginnings of recorded history to the present day, this expansive four-volume set examines the many varieties of the world’s literatures in their social and intellectual contexts. Its four volumes are devoted to literature before 200 CE, from 200 to 1500, from 1500 to 1800, and from 1800 to 2000, with four dozen contributors providing new insights into the art of literature, and addressing the situation of literature in the world today. Organized throughout in six broad regions—Africa, the Americas, East Asia, Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania, and West and Central Asia—Literature: A World History offers readers a clear and consistent treatment of diverse forms of literary expression across time and place. Throughout the text, particular emphasis is placed on literary institutions within different regional and linguistic cultures and on the relations between literature and a spectrum of social, political, and religious contexts. Features work by an international panel of leading scholars from around the globe, in Africa, the Middle East, South and East Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Europe, and the United States Provides a balanced overview of national and global literature from all major regions of the world from antiquity to the present Highlights the specificity of regional and local cultures throughout much of literary history, together with cross-cutting essays on topics such as different writing systems, court cultures, and utopias Literature: A World History is an invaluable reference work for undergraduate and graduate students as well as scholars looking for a wide-ranging overview of global literary history.