Interpretation And Literature In Early Medieval China

Covering a time of great intellectual ferment and great influence on what was to come, this book explores the literary and hermeneutic world of early medieval China. In addition to profound political changes, the fall of the Han dynasty allowed new currents in aesthetics, literature, interpretation, ethics, and religion to emerge during the Wei-Jin Nanbeichao period. The contributors to this volume present developments in literature and interpretation during this era from a variety of methodological perspectives, frequently highlighting issues hitherto unremarked in Western or even Chinese and Japanese scholarship. These include the rise of new literary and artistic values as the Han declined, changing patterns of patronage that helped reshape literary tastes and genres, and new developments in literary criticism. The religious changes of the period are revealed in the literary self-presentation of spiritual seekers, the influence of Daoism on motifs in poetry, and Buddhist influences on both poetry and historiography. Traditional Chinese literary figures, such as the fox and the ghost, receive fresh analysis about their particular representation during this period.

Exploring a time of profound change, this book details the intellectual ferment after the fall of the Han dynasty. Questions about "heaven" and the affairs of the world that had seemed resolved by Han Confucianism resurfaced and demanded reconsideration. New currents in philosophy, religion, and intellectual life emerged to leave an indelible mark on the subsequent development of Chinese thought and culture. This period saw the rise of xuanxue ("dark learning" or "learning of the mysterious Dao"), the establishment of religious Daoism, and the rise of Buddhism. In examining the key ideas of xuanxue and focusing on its main proponents, the contributors to this volume call into question the often-presumed monolithic identity of this broad philosophical front. The volume also highlights the richness and complexity of religion in China during this period, examining the relationship between the Way of the Celestial Master and local, popular religious beliefs and practices, and discussing the relationship between religious Daoism and Buddhism.

"In a formative period of Chinese culture, early medieval writers made extensive use of a diverse set of resources, in which such major philosophical classics as Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Classic of Changes featured prominently. Reading Philosophy, Writing Poetry examines how these writers understood and manipulated a shared intellectual lexicon to produce meaning. Focusing on works by some of the most important and innovative poets of the period, this book explores intertextuality—the transference, adaptation, or rewriting of signs—as a mode of reading and a condition of writing. It illuminates how a text can be seen in its full range of signifying potential within the early medieval constellation of textual connections and cultural signs.If culture is that which connects its members past, present, and future, then the past becomes an inherited and continually replenished repository of cultural patterns and signs with which the literati maintains an organic and constantly negotiated relationship of give and take. Wendy Swartz explores how early medieval writers in China developed a distinctive mosaic of ways to participate in their cultural heritage by weaving textual strands from a shared and expanding store of literary resources into new patterns and configurations."

The present volume is dedicated to the Wei Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties (220–589 AD), which is generally regarded as one of the most fascinating phases in Chinese history. The collection opens new theoretical and methodological pathways in sinological studies, bringing to the forefront a new idea of intercultural encounters based upon a culture of recognition. It highlights the significance of transition in the making of Chinese culture and history, revises prevailing historical approaches in the study and research of China and develops and enhances existing theories or methodologies in this specific area of research. The wide diversity of contributions to the present volume reflects the multifaceted potential for creativity and renewal of this period. The focus is upon the interaction of ideas, researches and perspectives concerning a broad scope of relevant and significant issues in contemporary sinology. In order to understand this diversity, a wide range of cultural, theoretical and historical aspects are considered. The book reveals a new image of the period, thereby undermining the absolute authority and putative objectivity of common historical sources and interpretations. It shows that this was a period rich with political, economic, cultural and theoretical achievements that would prove decisive for the future development of Chinese culture and society.

At last here is the long-awaited, first Western-language reference guide focusing exclusively on Chinese literature from ca. 700 B.C.E. to the early seventh century C.E. Alphabetically organized, it contains no less than 1095 entries on major and minor writers, literary forms and "schools," and important Chinese literary terms. In addition to providing authoritative information about each subject, the compilers have taken meticulous care to include detailed, up-to-date bibliographies and source information. The reader will find it a treasure-trove of historical accounts, especially when browsing through the biographies of authors. Indispensable for scholars and students of pre-modern Chinese literature, history, and thought. Part Three contains Xia - Y. Part Four contains the Z and an extensive index to the four volumes.

Between the Han dynasty, founded in 206 B.C.E., and the Sui, which ended in 618 C.E., Chinese authors wrote many thousands of short textual items, each of which narrated or described some phenomenon deemed "strange." Most items told of encounters between humans and various denizens of the spirit-world, or of the miraculous feats of masters of esoteric arts; some described the wonders of exotic lands, or transmitted fragments of ancient mythology. This genre of writing came to be known as zhiguai ("accounts of anomalies"). Who were the authors of these books, and why did they write of these "strange" matters? Why was such writing seen as a compelling thing to do? In this book, the first comprehensive study in a Western language of the zhiguai genre in its formative period, Campany sets forth a new view of the nature of the genre and the reasons for its emergence. He shows that contemporaries portrayed it as an extension of old royal and imperial traditions in which strange reports from the periphery were collected in the capital as a way of ordering the world. He illuminates how authors writing from most of the religious and cultural perspectives of the times—including Daoists, Buddhists, Confucians, and others—used the genre differently for their own persuasive purposes, in the process fundamentally altering the old traditions of anomaly-collecting. Analyzing the "accounts of anomalies" both in the context of Chinese religious and cultural history and as examples of a cross-culturally attested type of discourse, Campany combines in-depth Sinological research with broad-ranging comparative thinking in his approach to these puzzling, rich texts.

Behaving Badly in Early and Medieval China presents a rogues’ gallery of treacherous regicides, impious monks, cutthroat underlings, ill-bred offspring, and disloyal officials. It plumbs the dark matter of the human condition, placing front and center transgressive individuals and groups traditionally demonized by Confucian annalists and largely shunned by modern scholars. The work endeavors to apprehend the actions and motivations of these men and women, whose conduct deviated from normative social, cultural, and religious expectations. Early chapters examine how core Confucian bonds such as those between parents and children, and ruler and minister, were compromised, even severed. The living did not always reverently pay homage to the dead, children did not honor their parents with due filiality, a decorous distance was not necessarily observed between sons and stepmothers, and subjects often pursued their own interests before those of the ruler or the state. The elasticity of ritual and social norms is explored: Chapters on brazen Eastern Han (25–220) mourners and deviant calligraphers, audacious falconers, volatile Tang (618–907) Buddhist monks, and drunken Song (960–1279) literati reveal social norms treated not as universal truths but as debated questions of taste wherein political and social expedience both determined and highlighted individual roles within larger social structures and defined what was and was not aberrant. A Confucian predilection to “valorize [the] civil and disparage the martial” and Buddhist proscriptions on killing led literati and monks alike to condemn the cruelty and chaos of war. The book scrutinizes cultural attitudes toward military action and warfare, including those surrounding the bloody and capricious world of the Zuozhuan (Chronicle of Zuo), the relentless violence of the Five Dynasties and Ten States periods (907–979), and the exploits of Tang warrior priests—a series of studies that complicates the rhetoric by situating it within the turbulent realities of the times. By the end of this volume, readers will come away with the understanding that behaving badly in early and medieval China was not about morality but perspective, politics, and power.

As medieval Chinese manuscripts were copied and recopied through the centuries, both mistakes and deliberate editorial changes were introduced. Xiaofei Tian shows how readers not only experience authors but "produce" them by shaping texts to their interpretation, focusing on the evolution over the centuries of the reclusive poet Tao Yuanming into a figure of epic stature.

Between 300 and 600 C.E., Chinese writers compiled thousands of accounts of the strange and the extraordinary. Some described weird spirits, customs, and flora and fauna in distant lands. Some depicted individuals of unusual spiritual or moral achievement. But most told of ordinary people’s encounters with ghosts, demons, or gods; sojourns in the land of the dead; eerily significant dreams; and uncannily accurate premonitions. The selection of such stories presented here provides an alluring introduction to early medieval Chinese storytelling and opens a doorway to the enchanted world of thought, culture, and religious belief of that era. Known as zhiguai, or “accounts of anomalies,” they convey a great deal about how people saw the cosmos and their place in it. The tales were circulated because they were entertaining but also because their compilers meant to document the mysterious workings of spirits, the wonders of exotic places, and the nature of the afterlife. A collection of more than two hundred tales, A Garden of Marvels offers an authoritative yet accessible introduction to zhiguai writings, particularly those never before translated or adequately researched. This volume will likely find its way to bedside tables as well as into classrooms and libraries, just as collections of zhiguai did in early medieval times.