Authorship and Text-making in Early China

Authorship and Text-making in Early China PDF Author: Hanmo Zhang
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 150150519X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
This book is a timely response to a rather urgent call to seek an updated methodology in rereading and reappraising early Chinese texts in light of newly discovered early writings. For a long time, the concept of authorship in the formation and transmission of early Chinese texts has been misunderstood. The nominal author who should mainly function as a guide to text formation and interpretation is considered retrospectively as the originator and writer of the text. This book illustrates that although some notions about the text as the author’s property began to appear in some Eastern Han texts, a strict correlation between the author and the text results from later conceptions of literary history. Before the modern era, there existed a conceptual gap between an author and a writer. A pre-modern Chinese text could have had both an author and a writer, or even multiple authors and multiple writers. This work is the first study addressing these issues by more systematically emphasizing the connection of the text, the author, and the religious and sociopolitical settings in which these issues were embedded. It is expected to constitute a palpable contribution to Chinese studies and the discipline of philology in general

Authorship and Text-making in Early China

Authorship and Text-making in Early China PDF Author: Hanmo Zhang
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 150150519X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 375

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is a timely response to a rather urgent call to seek an updated methodology in rereading and reappraising early Chinese texts in light of newly discovered early writings. For a long time, the concept of authorship in the formation and transmission of early Chinese texts has been misunderstood. The nominal author who should mainly function as a guide to text formation and interpretation is considered retrospectively as the originator and writer of the text. This book illustrates that although some notions about the text as the author’s property began to appear in some Eastern Han texts, a strict correlation between the author and the text results from later conceptions of literary history. Before the modern era, there existed a conceptual gap between an author and a writer. A pre-modern Chinese text could have had both an author and a writer, or even multiple authors and multiple writers. This work is the first study addressing these issues by more systematically emphasizing the connection of the text, the author, and the religious and sociopolitical settings in which these issues were embedded. It is expected to constitute a palpable contribution to Chinese studies and the discipline of philology in general

Models of Authorship and Text-making in Early China

Models of Authorship and Text-making in Early China PDF Author: Hanmo Zhang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Buddhism
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
This dissertation aims to show how the author functioned as the key to classifying, preserving, and interpreting a body of ancient knowledge; the author not only served as a foundation upon which different elements of knowledge were brought together, but also as furnished cues to the interpretation of composite texts and thus created a notional coherence in texts. On a deeper level, the inquiry of early Chinese authorship also sheds light on the ritual, religious, and sociopolitical contexts influencing authorial attributions and on how such attributions are associated with early Chinese intellectual history in general. I argue in Chapter One that the figure of the Yellow Emperor was forged out of the Eastern Zhou ritual and religious thought that bears the mark of the ancestral veneration of high antiquity while at the same time reflecting the concerns of the changing social realities of the time. I argue in Chapter One that the figure of the Yellow Emperor was forged out of the Eastern Zhou ritual and religious thought that bears the mark of the ancestral veneration of high antiquity while at the same time reflecting the concerns of the changing social realities of the time. I argue in Chapter Two that the written materials later incorporated into the Lunyu originally served different purposes and were interpreted differently in different contexts. The compilation of the Lunyu in the early Western Han was concomitant with the trend of elevating and mythicizing Confucius as the creator of the Han governmental ideology because he filled the need for a tangible, quotable authority. Chapter Three argues that the "Yaolüe," the last chapter of the extant Huainanzi, was composed after Liu An's death as the means to impart a cohesive unity to the writings left from Liu An's Huainan court. It further explores the relationship between the patron-author and the actual writers or compilers. In Chapter Four I argue that neither of the two documents is autobiographical account written by Sima Qian. Instead, the voice of frustration conveyed in these two sources should be understood as the collective voice of the Han intellectuals. In Chapter Five I suggest that in the study of early Chinese translations of Buddhist texts we cannot view early catalogues of Buddhist translations as historical records; instead, we need to explore why and under what circumstances those catalogues were compiled. The intention to differentiate "true," "authentic" translations from apocryphal sutras was one of the most important factors motivating the cataloguing of early translated Buddhist scriptures.

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 and Literacy in Early China

Writing and Literacy in Early China PDF Author: Feng Li
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295804505
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
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.

Military Thought in Early China

Military Thought in Early China PDF Author: Christopher C. Rand
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 1438465173
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Provides a systematic and comprehensive survey of writings on military philosophy in early China. This study of the philosophy of war in early China examines the recurring debate, from antiquity through the Western Han period (202 BCE–8 CE), about how to achieve a proper balance between martial (wu) force and civil (wen) governance in the pursuit of a peaceful state. Rather than focusing solely on Sunzi’s Art of War and other military treatises from the Warring States era (ca. 475–221 BCE), Christopher C. Rand analyzes the evolution of this debate by examining a broad corpus of early Han and pre-Han texts, including works uncovered in archeological excavations during recent decades. What emerges is a framework for understanding early China’s military philosophy as an ongoing negotiation between three major alternatives: militarism, compartmentalism, and syncretism. Military Thought in Early China offers a look into China’s historical experience with a perennial issue that is not only of continuing relevance to modern-day China but also pertinent to other world states seeking to sustain strong and harmonious societies. “With its close engagement with and nuanced interpretation of a truly impressive range of sources, this book illuminates a field that gets too little serious attention.” — Charles Sanft, author of Communication and Cooperation in Early Imperial China: Publicizing the Qin Dynasty

Origins of Moral-political Philosophy in Early China

Origins of Moral-political Philosophy in Early China PDF Author: Tao Jiang
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197603475
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 537

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Book Description
This book offers a new narrative and interpretative framework about the origins of moral-political philosophy that tracks how the three core normative values, humaneness, justice, and personal freedom, were formulated, reformulated, and contested by early Chinese philosophers in their effort to negotiate the relationship among three distinct domains, the personal, the familial, and the political. Such efforts took place as those thinkers were reimagining a new moral-political order, debating its guiding norms, and exploring possible sources within the context of an evolving understanding of He

Theaters of Desire: Authors, Readers, and the Reproduction of Early Chinese Song-Drama, 1300–2000

Theaters of Desire: Authors, Readers, and the Reproduction of Early Chinese Song-Drama, 1300–2000 PDF Author: P. Sieber
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 140398249X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Blending a flair for textual nuance with theoretical engagement, Theaters of Desire not only contributes to our understanding of the most influential form of early Chinese song-drama in local and international cultural contexts, but adds a Chinese perspective to the scholarship on print culture, authorship, and the regulatory discourses of desire. The book argues that, particularly between 1550 and 1680, Chinese elite editors rewrote and printed early plays and songs, so-called Yuan-dynasty zaju and sanqu , to imagine and embody new concepts of authorship, readership and desire, an interpretation that contrasts starkly with the national and racially-oriented reception of song-drama developed by European critics after 1735 and subsequently modified by Japanese and Chinese critics after 1897. By analyzing the critical and material facets of the early song and play tradition across different historical periods and cultural settings, Theaters of Desire presents a compelling case study of literary canon formation.

Rewriting Early Chinese Texts

Rewriting Early Chinese Texts PDF Author: Edward L. Shaughnessy
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791466445
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Explores the rewriting of early Chinese texts in the wake of new archaeological evidence.

Early China/Ancient Greece

Early China/Ancient Greece PDF Author: Steven Shankman
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791488942
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
This pioneering book compares Chinese and Western thought to offer a bracing and unpredictable cross-cultural conversation. The work contributes to the emerging field of Sino-Hellenic studies, which links two great and influential cultures that, in fact, had virtually no contact during the ancient period. The patterns of thought and the cultural productions of early China and ancient Greece represent two significantly different responses to the myriad problems that human beings confront. Throughout this volume the comparisons between these cultures evince two critical ideas. First, that thinking is itself an inherently comparative activity. Through making comparisons, the familiar becomes strange, and the strange somewhat more familiar. Second, since we think through comparisons, we should think them all the way through. How valid and productive are the comparisons and contrasts made between particular works and different styles of thought that emerged from two different, although contemporaneous, cultural contexts?

Ways with Words

Ways with Words PDF Author: Pauline Yu
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520224667
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This is an interdisciplinary collection of articles analyzing seven classic premodern Chinese texts that are provided in translation.