Documentation and Argument in Early China

Documentation and Argument in Early China PDF Author: Dirk Meyer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110708531
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
This study uncovers the traditions behind the formative Classic Shàngshū (Venerated Documents). It is the first to establish these traditions—“Shū” (Documents)—as a historically evolving practice of thought-production. By focusing on the literary form of the argument, it interprets the “Shū” as fluid text material that embodies the ever-changing cultural capital of projected conceptual communities. By showing how these communities actualised the “Shū” according to their changing visions of history and evolving group interests, the study establishes that by the Warring States period (ca. 453–221 BC) the “Shū” had become a literary genre employed by diverse groups to legitimize their own arguments. Through forms of textual performance, the “Shū” gave even peripheral communities the means to participate in political discourse by conferring their ideas with ancient authority. Analysing this dynamic environment of socio-political and philosophical change, this study speaks to the Early China field, as well as to those interested in meaning production and foundational text formation more widely.

Documentation and Argument in Early China

Documentation and Argument in Early China PDF Author: Dirk Meyer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110708531
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Get Book Here

Book Description
This study uncovers the traditions behind the formative Classic Shàngshū (Venerated Documents). It is the first to establish these traditions—“Shū” (Documents)—as a historically evolving practice of thought-production. By focusing on the literary form of the argument, it interprets the “Shū” as fluid text material that embodies the ever-changing cultural capital of projected conceptual communities. By showing how these communities actualised the “Shū” according to their changing visions of history and evolving group interests, the study establishes that by the Warring States period (ca. 453–221 BC) the “Shū” had become a literary genre employed by diverse groups to legitimize their own arguments. Through forms of textual performance, the “Shū” gave even peripheral communities the means to participate in political discourse by conferring their ideas with ancient authority. Analysing this dynamic environment of socio-political and philosophical change, this study speaks to the Early China field, as well as to those interested in meaning production and foundational text formation more widely.

Documentation and Argument in Early China

Documentation and Argument in Early China PDF Author: Dirk Meyer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 9783110708417
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
This study uncovers the traditions behind the formative Classic Shàngshū (Venerated Documents). It is the first to establish these traditions--"Shū" (Documents)--as a historically evolving practice of thought-production. By focusing on the literary form of the argument, it interprets the "Shū" as fluid text material that embodies the ever-changing cultural capital of projected conceptual communities. By showing how these communities actualised the "Shū" according to their changing visions of history and evolving group interests, the study establishes that by the Warring States period (ca. 453-221 BC) the "Shū" had become a literary genre employed by diverse groups to legitimize their own arguments. Through forms of textual performance, the "Shū" gave even peripheral communities the means to participate in political discourse by conferring their ideas with ancient authority. Analysing this dynamic environment of socio-political and philosophical change, this study speaks to the Early China field, as well as to those interested in meaning production and foundational text formation more widely.

Documentation and Argument in Early China

Documentation and Argument in Early China PDF Author: Dirk Meyer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110708604
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This study uncovers the traditions behind the formative Classic Shàngshū (Venerated Documents). It is the first to establish these traditions—“Shū” (Documents)—as a historically evolving practice of thought-production. By focusing on the literary form of the argument, it interprets the “Shū” as fluid text material that embodies the ever-changing cultural capital of projected conceptual communities. By showing how these communities actualised the “Shū” according to their changing visions of history and evolving group interests, the study establishes that by the Warring States period (ca. 453–221 BC) the “Shū” had become a literary genre employed by diverse groups to legitimize their own arguments. Through forms of textual performance, the “Shū” gave even peripheral communities the means to participate in political discourse by conferring their ideas with ancient authority. Analysing this dynamic environment of socio-political and philosophical change, this study speaks to the Early China field, as well as to those interested in meaning production and foundational text formation more widely.

Writing and Authority in Early China

Writing and Authority in Early China PDF Author: Mark Edward Lewis
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438410743
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
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.

Writing Early China

Writing Early China PDF Author: Edward L. Shaughnessy
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438495234
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Archaeological discoveries over the past one hundred years have resulted in repeated calls to "rewrite ancient Chinese history." This is especially true of documents written on oracle bones, bronze vessels, and bamboo strips. In Writing Early China, Edward L. Shaughnessy surveys all of these types of documents and considers what they reveal about the creation and transmission of knowledge in ancient China. Opposed to the common view that most knowledge was transmitted orally in ancient China, Shaughnessy demonstrates that by no later than the tenth century BCE scribes were writing lengthy texts like portions of the Chinese classics, and that by the fourth century BCE the primary mode of textual transmission was by way of visual copying from one manuscript to another.

A History of Civil Law in Early China: Cases, Statutes, Concepts and Beyond

A History of Civil Law in Early China: Cases, Statutes, Concepts and Beyond PDF Author: Zhaoyang Zhang
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004513906
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Through the careful examination of cases, statutes and terminology preserved in both excavated and transmitted materials, this book argues that a civil law with distinctive Chinese characteristics emerged during the Qin and Han dynasties (221 B.C.-A.D. 220).

Bureaucracy and the State in Early China

Bureaucracy and the State in Early China PDF Author: Feng Li
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521884470
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
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.

Powerful Arguments

Powerful Arguments PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004423621
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 633

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Book Description
The essays in Powerful Arguments reconstruct the standards of validity underlying argumentative practices in a wide array of late imperial Chinese discourses, ranging from historiography, philosophy, law and religion to natural studies, literature, and the civil examination system.

Text and Ritual in Early China

Text and Ritual in Early China PDF Author: Martin Kern
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295800313
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
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 Politics of the Past in Early China

The Politics of the Past in Early China PDF Author: Vincent S. Leung
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108425720
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
History mattered to the political elite in ancient China. Leung explores why it was so important and to what end.