Court Culture and Literature in Early China
Court Culture and Literature in Early China

Author: David R. Knechtges

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13:

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The studies brought together here focus upon the literary and cultural activity of the Chinese court during the Han and early medieval period. The first section concerns court literature in the Former Han and deals with the role of literature, especially poetry, at both the imperial and princely courts, including one study of the writings attributed to an imperial concubine, who used poetry to express her resentment at falling from the emperor's favour. The next section looks at a leading court writer of the Late Western Han dynasty, Yang Xiong, while the third part deals with the leading poetic genre of this period, the fu or rhapsody. These papers examine major themes such as praise, travel, dating and authenticity, and problems of translation. The volume concludes with two articles on food culture in early and medieval China.

Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature (vol.I)
Ancient and Early Medieval Chinese Literature (vol.I)

Author: David R. Knechtges

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2010-09-10

Total Pages: 802

ISBN-13: 9004191275

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The long-awaited, first Western-language reference guide, this work offers a wealth of information on writers, genres, literary schools and terms of the Chinese literary tradition from earliest times to the seventh century C.E.

Interpretation and Literature in Early Medieval China
Interpretation and Literature in Early Medieval China

Author: Alan K. L. Chan

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2010-07-01

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1438432194

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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.

The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature (1000 BCE-900 CE)
The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature (1000 BCE-900 CE)

Author: Wiebke Denecke

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 625

ISBN-13: 0199356599

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This volume introduces readers to classical Chinese literature from its beginnings (ca. 10th century BCE) to the tenth century BCE through a conceptual framework centered on textual production and transmission. It focuses on recuperating historical perspectives for the period it surveys, and attempts to draw connections between the past and present.

Courtier and Commoner in Ancient China
Courtier and Commoner in Ancient China

Author: Gu Ban

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 1974

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9780231083546

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Pan Ku's celebrated and influential History of the Former Han has been a model for dynastic history since its appearance in the first century A.D.Burton Watson has translated ten chapters from the biography section, including the lives of imperial princes, generals, officials, and some lesser figures.

Picturing Heaven in Early China
Picturing Heaven in Early China

Author: Lillian Lan-ying Tseng

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-03-17

Total Pages: 479

ISBN-13: 1684175097

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Tian, or Heaven, had multiple meanings in early China. It had been used since the Western Zhou to indicate both the sky and the highest god, and later came to be regarded as a force driving the movement of the cosmos and as a home to deities and imaginary animals. By the Han dynasty, which saw an outpouring of visual materials depicting Heaven, the concept of Heaven encompassed an immortal realm to which humans could ascend after death. Using excavated materials, Lillian Tseng shows how Han artisans transformed various notions of Heaven—as the mandate, the fantasy, and the sky—into pictorial entities. The Han Heaven was not indicated by what the artisans looked at, but rather was suggested by what they looked into. Artisans attained the visibility of Heaven by appropriating and modifying related knowledge of cosmology, mythology, astronomy. Thus the depiction of Heaven in Han China reflected an interface of image and knowledge. By examining Heaven as depicted in ritual buildings, on household utensils, and in the embellishments of funerary settings, Tseng maintains that visibility can hold up a mirror to visuality; Heaven was culturally constructed and should be culturally reconstructed.

Representations of Childhood and Youth in Early China
Representations of Childhood and Youth in Early China

Author: Anne Behnke Kinney

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780804747318

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This is the first book in any language to inquire into the emergence of childhood as a topic of significant cultural attention in Han times, as expressed in the intellectual discourse surrounding early Chinese cosmology, medicine, law, statecraft, and dynastic history.

Forming the Early Chinese Court
Forming the Early Chinese Court

Author: Luke Habberstad

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2018-01-01

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0295742402

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Forming the Early Chinese Court builds on new directions in comparative studies of royal courts in the ancient world to present a pioneering study of early Chinese court culture. Rejecting divides between literary, political, and administrative texts, Luke Habberstad examines sources from the Qin, Western Han, and Xin periods (221 BCE–23 CE) for insights into court society and ritual, rank, the development of the bureaucracy, and the role of the emperor. These diverse sources show that a large, but not necessarily cohesive, body of courtiers drove the consolidation, distribution, and representation of power in court institutions. Forming the Early Chinese Court encourages us to see China’s imperial unification as a surprisingly idiosyncratic process that allowed different actors to stake claims in a world of increasing population, wealth, and power.

Essays in Medieval Chinese Literature and Cultural History
Essays in Medieval Chinese Literature and Cultural History

Author: Paul W. Kroll

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-06-09

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 1000943186

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This is one of a pair of volumes by Paul Kroll (the companion volume deals with medieval Taoism and the poetry of Li Po). Collecting eleven essays by this leading scholar of Chinese poetry, the volume presents a selection of studies devoted to the medieval period, centering especially on the T'ang dynasty. It opens with the author's famous articles on the dancing horses of T'ang, on the emperor Hsüan Tsung's abandonment of his capital and forced execution of his prized consort, and on poems relating to the holy mountain T'ai Shan (with special attention to Li Po). Following these are detailed examinations of landscape and mountain imagery in the poetry of the "High T'ang" period in the mid-8th century, and of an extraordinary attempt made in the mid-9th-century to recall in verse and anecdote the great days of the High T'ang. The second section of the book includes two articles on birds (notably the kingfisher and the egret) in medieval poetry, and four of Kroll's influential studies focusing on the verse-form known as the fu or "rhapsody," especially drawing from the 3rd-century poet Ts'ao Chih and the 7th-century poet Lu Chao-lin.