The Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography - 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 Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography write by Wai-yee Li. This book was released on 2020-03-17. The Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. "The past becomes readable when we can tell stories and make arguments about it. When we can tell more than one story or make divergent arguments, the readability of the past then becomes an issue. Therein lies the beginning of history, the sense of inquiry that heightens our awareness of interpretation. How do interpretive structures develop and disintegrate? What are the possibilities and limits of historical knowledge? This book explores these issues through a study of the Zuozhuan, a foundational text in the Chinese tradition, whose rhetorical and analytical self-consciousness reveals much about the contending ways of thought unfolding during the period of the text’s formation (ca. 4th c. B.C.E.). But in what sense is this vast collection of narratives and speeches covering the period from 722 to 468 B.C.E. “historical”? If one can speak of an emergent sense of history in this text, Wai-yee Li argues, it lies precisely at the intersection of varying conceptions of interpretation and rhetoric brought to bear on the past, within a larger context of competing solutions to the instability and disintegration represented through the events of the 255 years covered by the Zuozhuan. Even as its accounts of proliferating disorder and disintegration challenge the boundaries of readability, the deliberations on the rules of reading in the Zuozhuan probe the dimensions of historical self-consciousness."
The Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography
The Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography - 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 Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography write by Wai-yee Li. This book was released on 2007. The Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. What are the possibilities and limits of historical knowledge? This book explores these issues through a study of the Zuozhuan, a foundational text in the Chinese tradition, whose rhetorical and analytical self-consciousness reveals much about the contending ways of thought unfolding during the period of the text's formation.
A Patterned Past
A Patterned Past - 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 Patterned Past write by David Schaberg. This book was released on 2020-03-23. A Patterned Past available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In this comprehensive study of the rhetoric, narrative patterns, and intellectual content of the Zuozhuan and Guoyu, David Schaberg reads these two collections of historical anecdotes as traces of a historiographical practice that flourished around the fourth century BCE among the followers of Confucius. He contends that the coherent view of early China found in these texts is an effect of their origins and the habits of reading they impose. Rather than being totally accurate accounts, they represent the efforts of a group of officials and ministers to argue for a moralizing interpretation of the events of early Chinese history and for their own value as skilled interpreters of events and advisers to the rulers of the day.
Dubious Facts
Dubious Facts - 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 Dubious Facts write by Garret P. S. Olberding. This book was released on 2012-12-04. Dubious Facts available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. What were the intentions of early China's historians? Modern readers must contend with the tension between the narrators' moralizing commentary and their description of events. Although these historians had notions of evidence, it is not clear to what extent they valued what contemporary scholars would deem "hard" facts. Offering an innovative approach to premodern historical documents, Garret P. S. Olberding argues that the speeches of court advisors reveal subtle strategies of information management in the early monarchic context. Olberding focuses on those addresses concerning military campaigns where evidence would be important in guiding immediate social and political policy. His analysis reveals the sophisticated conventions that governed the imperial advisor's logic and suasion in critical state discussions, which were specifically intended to counter anticipated doubts. Dubious Facts illuminates both the decision-making processes that informed early Chinese military campaigns and the historical records that represent them.
Mirroring the Past
Mirroring the Past - 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 Mirroring the Past write by On-cho Ng. This book was released on 2005-08-31. Mirroring the Past available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. China is known for its deep veneration of history. Far more than a record of the past, history to the Chinese is the magister vitae (teacher of life): the storehouse of moral lessons and bureaucratic precedents. Mirroring the Past presents a comprehensive history of traditional Chinese historiography from antiquity to the mid-Qing period. Organized chronologically, the book traces the development of historical thinking and writing in Imperial China, beginning with the earliest forms of historical consciousness and ending with adumbrations of the fundamentally different views engendered by mid-nineteenth-century encounters with the West. The historiography of each era is explored on two levels: first, the gathering of material and the writing and production of narratives to describe past events; second, the thinking and reflecting on meanings and patterns of the past. Significantly, the book embeds within this chronological structure integrated views of Chinese historiography, bringing to light the purposive, didactic, and normative uses of the past. Examining both the worlds of official and unofficial historiography, the authors lay bare the ingenious ways in which Chinese scholars extracted truth from events and reveal how schemas and philosophies of history were constructed and espoused. They highlight the dynamic nature of Chinese historiography, revealing that historical works mapped the contours of Chinese civilization not for the sake of understanding history as disembodied and theoretical learning, but for the pragmatic purpose of guiding the world by mirroring the past in all its splendor and squalor.
