The Culture of Language in Ming China - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Culture of Language in Ming China write by Nathan Vedal. This book was released on 2022-04-13. The Culture of Language in Ming China available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Winner, 2023 Morris D. Forkosch Prize, Journal of the History of Ideas The scholarly culture of Ming dynasty China (1368–1644) is often seen as prioritizing philosophy over concrete textual study. Nathan Vedal uncovers the preoccupation among Ming thinkers with specialized linguistic learning, a field typically associated with the intellectual revolution of the eighteenth century. He explores the collaboration of Confucian classicists and Buddhist monks, opera librettists and cosmological theorists, who joined forces in the pursuit of a universal theory of language. Drawing on a wide range of overlooked scholarly texts, literary commentaries, and pedagogical materials, Vedal examines how Ming scholars positioned the study of language within an interconnected nexus of learning. He argues that for sixteenth- and seventeenth-century thinkers, the boundaries among the worlds of classicism, literature, music, cosmology, and religion were far more fluid and porous than they became later. In the eighteenth century, Qing thinkers pared away these other fields from linguistic learning, creating a discipline focused on corroborating the linguistic features of ancient texts. Documenting a major transformation in knowledge production, this book provides a framework for rethinking global early modern intellectual developments. It offers a powerful alternative to the conventional understanding of late imperial Chinese intellectual history by focusing on the methods of scholarly practice and the boundaries by which contemporary thinkers defined their field of study.
A Cultural History of the Chinese Language
A Cultural History of the Chinese Language - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook A Cultural History of the Chinese Language write by Sharron Gu. This book was released on 2011-12-22. A Cultural History of the Chinese Language available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Chinese, one of the oldest active languages, evolved over 5,000 years. As such, it makes for a fascinating case study in the development of language. This cultural history of Chinese demonstrates that the language grew and responded to its music and visual expression in a manner very similar to contemporary English and other Western languages. Within Chinese cultural history lie the answers to numerous questions that have haunted scholars for decades: How does language relate to worldview? What would happen to law after its language loses absolute binding power? How do music, visual, and theatrical images influence literature? By presenting Chinese not as a system of signs but as the history of a community, this study shows how language has expanded the scope of Chinese imagination and offers a glimpse into the future of younger languages throughout the world.
The Magnitude of Ming
The Magnitude of Ming - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Magnitude of Ming write by Christopher Lupke. This book was released on 2005-01-31. The Magnitude of Ming available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Few ideas in Chinese discourse are as ubiquitous as ming, variously understood as “command,” “allotted lifespan,” “fate,” or “life.” In the earliest days of Chinese writing, ming was already present, invoked in divinations and etched into ancient bronzes; it has continued to inscribe itself down to the twenty-first century in literature and film. This volume assembles twelve essays by some of the most eminent scholars currently working in Chinese studies to produce the first comprehensive study in English of ming’s broad web of meanings. The essays span the history of Chinese civilization and represent disciplines as varied as religion, philosophy, anthropology, literary studies, history, and sociology. Cross-cultural comparisons between ancient Chinese views of ming and Western conceptions of moira and fatum are discussed, providing a specific point of departure for contrasting the structure of attitudes between the two civilizations. Ming is central to debates on the legitimacy of rulership and is the crucial variable in Daoist manuals for prolonging one’s life. It has preoccupied the philosopher and the poet and weighed on the minds of commoners throughout imperial China. Ming was the subject of the great critic Jin Shengtan’s last major literary work and drove the narrative of such classic novels as The Investiture of the Gods and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Confucius, Mencius, and most other great thinkers of the classical age, as well as those in ages to come, had much to say on the subject. It has only been eschewed in contemporary Chinese philosophy, but even its effacement there has ironically turned it into a sort of absent cause. Contributors: Stephen Bokenkamp, Zong-qi Cai, Robert Campany, Woei Lien Chong, Deirdre Sabina Knight, Christopher Lupke, Mu-chou Poo, Michael Puett, Lisa Raphals, P. Steven Sangren, David Schaberg, Patricia Sieber.
The Literature and Cultural Ecology of Imperial Examinations in the Ming Dynasty
The Literature and Cultural Ecology of Imperial Examinations in the Ming Dynasty - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Literature and Cultural Ecology of Imperial Examinations in the Ming Dynasty write by Wenxin Chen. This book was released on 2023-11-06. The Literature and Cultural Ecology of Imperial Examinations in the Ming Dynasty available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The book examines the relationship between imperial examinations and literature from the perspective of restoring the cultural ecology of imperial examinations in Ming China, breaking through the paradigm of pure literature research. This book presents an important practice in adjusting the pattern of literary research. The contents of this book include five mutually independent but supportive parts: 1) the living conditions and careers of the literary attendants; 2) the educational background and school’s consciousness of the Ming literati; 3) top candidates and Ming literature; 4) genres of imperial examination and the Ming society; 5) exam cheating cases from the perspective of politics and literature. This book will appeal to readers interested in Chinese literature and culture and the imperial examination system in ancient China.
Clothing, Food, and Travel
Clothing, Food, and Travel - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Clothing, Food, and Travel write by Xiaoyi Liu (Specialist in classical Chinese language and literature). This book was released on 2024. Clothing, Food, and Travel available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. "This book explores the material and cultural history of the Ming Dynasty based on the Chinese magnum opus Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan (literally The Story of a Marital Fate to Awaken the World), written under the pseudonym of the seventeenth-century writer Xizhou Sheng. The novel weaves into its narrative, through the characters' personalities and the events it illustrates, important details of Ming material life. Through this literary snapshot of the Ming material culture as reflected in Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan, this work investigates the practices and customs of clothing, food, and travel, three of the "four major concerns of the people's livelihoods," known as yishizhuxing in Chinese. While frequenting economic dimensions and probing the impact that Ming politics had on the ethos and social economy of the period, it sheds significant light on folk customs, legal and religious practices, and the status of women, among other issues. This work aims to enrich the current Western scholarship, done primarily by Timothy Brook, Craig Clunas, and Hok-lam Chan, on the Ming material culture. The book will be of great value to students and scholars of East Asian Studies, Chinese literature and those interested in the history of material culture in general"--
