Author:
Fangyi Cheng 程方毅
Advisor:
Victor H. Mair
Defended:
2018
School:
University of Pennsylvania
Abstract:
This dissertation aims to examine the institutional transitions of the Inner Asian groups in the Central Plain during the Sixteen Kingdoms period and Northern Dynasties. Starting with an examination on the origin and development of Sinicization theory in the West and China, the first major chapter of this dissertation argues the Sinicization theory evolves in the intellectual history of modern times. This chapter, in one hand, offers a different explanation on the origin of the Sinicization theory in both China and the West, and their relationships. In the other hand, it incorporates Sinicization theory into the construction of the historical narrative of Chinese Nationality, and argues the theorization of Sinicization attempted by several scholars in the second half of 20th Century. The second and third major chapters build two case studies regarding the transition of the central and local institutions of the Inner Asian polities in the Central Plain, which are the succession system and the local administrative system. In the first case study, through applying the crown prince system, the Inner Asian rulers reached the centralization of authority, which was different from and even more centralized than the Han tradition. In the second case study, the polities of the Sixteen Kingdoms Period and Northern Dynasties largely followed the Inner Asian political tradition and the Inner Asian groups also remained as units inside the polities. The two case studies show the transition of the institutions of the Inner Asian polity in the Central Plain. The transition is neither a one- way change from Inner Asian institutions to Han and Jin institutions nor a simple hybridity. For different institutions, here the succession system in the central government and the administrative system in the local level, the dynamics for the transition are also not the same. This dissertation approaches the Chinese history with articulating not only what these Inner Asian groups took from the Chinese tradition, but also what they contributed to the institutional changes in Chinese history, which reshapes our understanding of what we call “Chinese” institutions, in other words, Chineseness.
Monday, July 30, 2018
Friday, July 27, 2018
[Dissertation] The Rhetoric and Ritual of Celestial Signs in Early Imperial China
Author:
Jesse Chapman
School:
University of California, Berkeley
Defended:
2015
Abstract:
The Rhetoric and Ritual of Celestial Signs in Early Imperial China investigates the circulation of signs such as planets in retrograde motion, comets, oddly-shaped clouds, inclement weather, and rainbows in the Western Han (206 BCE–8 CE) and Eastern Han (25–220 CE) dynasties. Building on scholarship in the history of science and previous historical studies of omenology, the present work focuses on the rhetorical and ritual dimensions of celestial signs within broader political, literary, and technical networks. It examines technical treatises in the standard histories, manuscripts on astro-omenology from the tombs of the ruling family of Dai at Mawangdui 馬王堆 (terminus ad quem 168 BCE), memorials to the throne, liturgical repertoires, poetic celestial journeys, and early exegetical works to illuminate how celestial signs both created discursive possibilities and were themselves shaped by generic contexts and performative goals. The dissertation argues that celestial signs became meaningful always in relation to surrounding contexts, as they were read against the constellations in which they appeared, historical circumstances, present conditions in the empire, and through the voices of the deities, supplicants, rulers, and ministers that invoked them. By examining a broad range of contexts in which celestial signs appeared, this dissertation contributes to a fuller and more balanced appreciation of the variegated roles celestial signs played in the shifting culture of early imperial China.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Introduction: Celestial Signs, Culture, and the Cosmos
Chapter 2: Celestial Signs at the Local Court of Dai: The Mawangdui Manuscripts
Chapter 3: Celestial Signs in the Writing of History
Chapter 4: Etiology, Contingency, and Textual Authority: The Suasive Power of Celestial Signs
Chapter 5: Celestial Signs, Ritual, and the Performance of Voice
Chapter 6: Conclusion and Supplement: “Cloudy River” and the Problem of Ritual Failed
Jesse Chapman
School:
University of California, Berkeley
Defended:
2015
Abstract:
The Rhetoric and Ritual of Celestial Signs in Early Imperial China investigates the circulation of signs such as planets in retrograde motion, comets, oddly-shaped clouds, inclement weather, and rainbows in the Western Han (206 BCE–8 CE) and Eastern Han (25–220 CE) dynasties. Building on scholarship in the history of science and previous historical studies of omenology, the present work focuses on the rhetorical and ritual dimensions of celestial signs within broader political, literary, and technical networks. It examines technical treatises in the standard histories, manuscripts on astro-omenology from the tombs of the ruling family of Dai at Mawangdui 馬王堆 (terminus ad quem 168 BCE), memorials to the throne, liturgical repertoires, poetic celestial journeys, and early exegetical works to illuminate how celestial signs both created discursive possibilities and were themselves shaped by generic contexts and performative goals. The dissertation argues that celestial signs became meaningful always in relation to surrounding contexts, as they were read against the constellations in which they appeared, historical circumstances, present conditions in the empire, and through the voices of the deities, supplicants, rulers, and ministers that invoked them. By examining a broad range of contexts in which celestial signs appeared, this dissertation contributes to a fuller and more balanced appreciation of the variegated roles celestial signs played in the shifting culture of early imperial China.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Introduction: Celestial Signs, Culture, and the Cosmos
Chapter 2: Celestial Signs at the Local Court of Dai: The Mawangdui Manuscripts
Chapter 3: Celestial Signs in the Writing of History
Chapter 4: Etiology, Contingency, and Textual Authority: The Suasive Power of Celestial Signs
Chapter 5: Celestial Signs, Ritual, and the Performance of Voice
Chapter 6: Conclusion and Supplement: “Cloudy River” and the Problem of Ritual Failed
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Routledge Handbook of Imperial Chinese History
Editors:
Victor Cunrui Xiong & Kenneth J. Hammond
Publisher:
Routledge
Publication Date:
August 2018
Abstract:
Following more than 30 years of market reform, China has become an economic powerhouse, likely to surpass the United States as the world's largest economy in the not so distant future. The resurgence of China has generated much interest not only in the present conditions of that country, but also in her past. Since China is the only uninterrupted ancient civilization that is stilling living today, the study of it can be a very rewarding pursuit in its own right, but can also offer tremendous benefit to anyone who wants to gain an in-depth understanding of modern China. Perhaps more than anywhere else, in China, the present is intricately linked with the past. Providing coverage of the entire Imperial Era (221 BCE-1912 CE) the handbook takes a chronological approach with key themes such as politics, religion, culture, the economy, and science embedded in the chapters. This is an essential resource for upper level undergraduates and graduates studying Imperial Chinese history in class or on their own; it will also be of interest to graduate students and scholars interested in broadening the scope of their research.
Table of contents:
Introduction
Part I: Early Imperial China (Qin–Five Dynasties)
Section 1 The Qin-Han Empire
1. The Qin Dynasty, Charles Sanft
2. The Western Han, Liang CAI
3. The Eastern Han, Rafe de Crespigny
Section 2 The Six Dynasties
4. The Three States (Three Kingdoms), Michael Farmer
5. The Jin and the Sixteen States, Kawamoto Yoshiaki 川本芳昭
6. The Southern and Northern Dynasties, Andrew Chittick
Section 3 The Sui-Tang Empire and Five Dynasties
7. The Sui Dynasty, Victor Cunrui Xiong
8. The Tang Dynasty I (618-756), Seo Tatsuhiko 妹尾達彥
9. The Tang Dynasty II (756–907), Antony DeBlasi
10. The Five Dynasties, Peter Lorge
Victor Cunrui Xiong & Kenneth J. Hammond
Publisher:
Routledge
Publication Date:
August 2018
Abstract:
Following more than 30 years of market reform, China has become an economic powerhouse, likely to surpass the United States as the world's largest economy in the not so distant future. The resurgence of China has generated much interest not only in the present conditions of that country, but also in her past. Since China is the only uninterrupted ancient civilization that is stilling living today, the study of it can be a very rewarding pursuit in its own right, but can also offer tremendous benefit to anyone who wants to gain an in-depth understanding of modern China. Perhaps more than anywhere else, in China, the present is intricately linked with the past. Providing coverage of the entire Imperial Era (221 BCE-1912 CE) the handbook takes a chronological approach with key themes such as politics, religion, culture, the economy, and science embedded in the chapters. This is an essential resource for upper level undergraduates and graduates studying Imperial Chinese history in class or on their own; it will also be of interest to graduate students and scholars interested in broadening the scope of their research.
Table of contents:
Introduction
Part I: Early Imperial China (Qin–Five Dynasties)
Section 1 The Qin-Han Empire
1. The Qin Dynasty, Charles Sanft
2. The Western Han, Liang CAI
3. The Eastern Han, Rafe de Crespigny
Section 2 The Six Dynasties
4. The Three States (Three Kingdoms), Michael Farmer
5. The Jin and the Sixteen States, Kawamoto Yoshiaki 川本芳昭
6. The Southern and Northern Dynasties, Andrew Chittick
Section 3 The Sui-Tang Empire and Five Dynasties
7. The Sui Dynasty, Victor Cunrui Xiong
8. The Tang Dynasty I (618-756), Seo Tatsuhiko 妹尾達彥
9. The Tang Dynasty II (756–907), Antony DeBlasi
10. The Five Dynasties, Peter Lorge
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Spatial Imaginaries in Mid-Tang China: Geography, Cartography, and Literature
Author:
Ao Wang 王敖
Publication Date:
August 2018
Publisher:
Cambria Press
Abstract:
This book explores a new and innovative topic—the relationship between geographical advancements in the Mid-Tang period (790s to 820s) and spatial imaginaries in contemporaneous literature. Historically and politically, the Mid-Tang period is generally considered to be a period of imperial reconstruction following the chaos of the An Lushan Rebellion (755–763), a rebellion that had a profound impact not only on the Tang empire but also on all of Chinese history. On the one hand, this era witnessed a heightened geographical awareness and a rapid development and accumulation of geographical knowledge, as was manifested in the governmental production of local map-guides and the invention of some monumental world maps. On the other hand, Mid-Tang literature represents one of the peaks of traditional Chinese literature and is known for its diversity of genres and innovative and imaginative engagement with space.
For the first time in Tang scholarship, this study identifies the epistemological and aesthetic interplay between geography and literature in medieval China and investigates how this thus-far neglected interplay shaped the Mid-Tang literary imagination. This interdisciplinary investigation uncovers a rich cultural history of human exploration of the world on both fronts and provides a fresh reading of some of the most famous works of Tang literature, for example Li He’s poetry and Liu Zongyuan’s landscape essays. This study reveals some unique phenomena in genre development and individual creation in Mid-Tang literature and deepens our understanding of the inner workings and internal drive of traditional Chinese literature in general.
This book expands and deepens the exploration of the interactions between literature and geography. Literary geography has been an active interdisciplinary field ever since the 1970s. In the early years as the field was taking shape, it was widely criticized for its instrumentalization of literary texts as unproblematic sources for empirical geographical study. In recent years, however, literary scholars have become increasingly interested in treating literary texts as another form of geography, or spatial organization, as many key literary elements, such as setting and milieu in fiction and imagery arrangement in poetry, involve spatial understanding on a fundamental level.
This study takes two important approaches regarding the ongoing debates in the field of literary geography. Inasmuch as traditional Chinese intellectual culture prioritized broad learning over specialization, disciplinary boundaries were unclear and literati were often multitalented. Accordingly, in the cases examined in this book, these literary masters were also cartographers, geographical writers, or at least experienced readers of geographical works. Therefore, the study’s approach does not treat either literature or geography as instrumental to the other, but rather examines how these two interrelated fields formed a shared intellectual horizon among the literati and found entrance to each other to create new knowledge, perspectives, and metaphors. This study also does not regard literature as a metaphorical geography in a generalized sense, but is specifically focused on how the geographic proficiency of literary authors informed their literature. Together, these two approaches suggest new possibilities of interdisciplinary exchange and offer a new perspective on the results of such exchanges as embodied in literary creation.
This book will be a welcome resource for scholars and students in Chinese literature, historical geography, cultural history, and art history.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1. Geographical Advancements in the Mid-Tang
Chapter 2. The Big Picture: Poetic Visions and the Cartographic Eye
Chapter 3. The Shifting Shapes of the Local Sphere: Map-Guides and
Literary Writing
Chapter 4. Into the Deep South: The Aesthetics of New Landmark Creation
Chapter 5. Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen: The Wonder of Interactive Geography
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Ao Wang 王敖
Publication Date:
August 2018
Publisher:
Cambria Press
Abstract:
This book explores a new and innovative topic—the relationship between geographical advancements in the Mid-Tang period (790s to 820s) and spatial imaginaries in contemporaneous literature. Historically and politically, the Mid-Tang period is generally considered to be a period of imperial reconstruction following the chaos of the An Lushan Rebellion (755–763), a rebellion that had a profound impact not only on the Tang empire but also on all of Chinese history. On the one hand, this era witnessed a heightened geographical awareness and a rapid development and accumulation of geographical knowledge, as was manifested in the governmental production of local map-guides and the invention of some monumental world maps. On the other hand, Mid-Tang literature represents one of the peaks of traditional Chinese literature and is known for its diversity of genres and innovative and imaginative engagement with space.
For the first time in Tang scholarship, this study identifies the epistemological and aesthetic interplay between geography and literature in medieval China and investigates how this thus-far neglected interplay shaped the Mid-Tang literary imagination. This interdisciplinary investigation uncovers a rich cultural history of human exploration of the world on both fronts and provides a fresh reading of some of the most famous works of Tang literature, for example Li He’s poetry and Liu Zongyuan’s landscape essays. This study reveals some unique phenomena in genre development and individual creation in Mid-Tang literature and deepens our understanding of the inner workings and internal drive of traditional Chinese literature in general.
This book expands and deepens the exploration of the interactions between literature and geography. Literary geography has been an active interdisciplinary field ever since the 1970s. In the early years as the field was taking shape, it was widely criticized for its instrumentalization of literary texts as unproblematic sources for empirical geographical study. In recent years, however, literary scholars have become increasingly interested in treating literary texts as another form of geography, or spatial organization, as many key literary elements, such as setting and milieu in fiction and imagery arrangement in poetry, involve spatial understanding on a fundamental level.
This study takes two important approaches regarding the ongoing debates in the field of literary geography. Inasmuch as traditional Chinese intellectual culture prioritized broad learning over specialization, disciplinary boundaries were unclear and literati were often multitalented. Accordingly, in the cases examined in this book, these literary masters were also cartographers, geographical writers, or at least experienced readers of geographical works. Therefore, the study’s approach does not treat either literature or geography as instrumental to the other, but rather examines how these two interrelated fields formed a shared intellectual horizon among the literati and found entrance to each other to create new knowledge, perspectives, and metaphors. This study also does not regard literature as a metaphorical geography in a generalized sense, but is specifically focused on how the geographic proficiency of literary authors informed their literature. Together, these two approaches suggest new possibilities of interdisciplinary exchange and offer a new perspective on the results of such exchanges as embodied in literary creation.
This book will be a welcome resource for scholars and students in Chinese literature, historical geography, cultural history, and art history.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1. Geographical Advancements in the Mid-Tang
Chapter 2. The Big Picture: Poetic Visions and the Cartographic Eye
Chapter 3. The Shifting Shapes of the Local Sphere: Map-Guides and
Literary Writing
Chapter 4. Into the Deep South: The Aesthetics of New Landmark Creation
Chapter 5. Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen: The Wonder of Interactive Geography
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Sunday, June 24, 2018
Reading the Signs: Philology, History, Prognostication: Festschrift for Michael Lackner
Editors:
Amelung, Iwo / Kurtz, Joachim
Publication Date:
2018
Publisher:
München Iudicium
Abtract:
Over more than 40 years, the sinologist Michael Lackner has studied a broad range of issues in China’s past and present. On the occasion of his 65th birthday, this volume brings together essays from friends, collaborators, colleagues, and students dedicated to the three fields of research in which he has made his most lasting contributions: philology, the histories of science and thought, and the study of prognostication. Michael Lackner’s work in all these areas is connected by an intense engagement with “signs”—texts and images but also objects, dreams, portents and omens—and the semiotic, epistemic and political contexts in which they become meaningful. The 25 contributions presented here highlight the fertility of such a transdisciplinary approach. Reading signs in material, textual, and visual sources dating from 2000 BCE to the present, scholars from four continents address themes as diverse as early Chinese ritual and cosmology; imperial and modern Chinese poetry, prose and drama; Chinese alchemy, astronomy and mathematics; the theory and practice of divination and prognosis; as well as exegetical traditions, political rhetoric, and problems of translation. Many articles examine entanglements between China and the West and offer comparative perspectives on developments in Europe and the Islamicate world.
Table of Contents:
List of Publications by Michael Lackner 朗宓榭
To a Reader of Signs: A Dedication
Iwo Amelung and Joachim Kurtz
I. Philology
The Earliest Chinese Bells in Light of New Archaeological Discoveries
Lothar von Falkenhausen
Reading Newly Discovered Texts: Approaches to the Guodian Text “Zhongxin zhi dao” 忠信之道
Michael Schimmelpfennig
The Language of Heaven
Rudolf G. Wagner
Sage: An Unreadable Sign
Chu Pingyi
Du Fu’s Long Gaze Back: Fate, History, Heroism, Authorship
Martin Kern
Sources for his Chinese Book
Christoph Harbsmeier
The Chinese Traditional Method of “Full or Vacant Characters” and the Grammar of Port-Royal
Uchida Keiichi
The Formation of Modern Written Chinese: Writing Categories and Polysyllabic Words
Shen Guowei
How to Modernize Hermeneutics: Readings of Rilke’s Late Poems
Christoph König
II. History
Laozi and Internal Alchemy
Fabrizio Pregadio
Drunken Talk: Political Discourse and Alcohol Consumption during the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127 CE)
Dagmar Schäfer
Nara Singde, Assimilation, Acculturation, and Identity in the Early Qing
Erling von Mende
The Delayed “Triumph” of Yan Ruoqu’s Evidential Studies during the Qianlong Era
Benjamin A. Elman
Scientific News or Prognostic Interpretation: Chinese Records of the 1874 Transit of Venus
Lü Lingfeng
Local Refractions of a Global Concept
Joachim Kurtz
The Role of Alchemy in Constructing the Chinese Scientific Tradition
Iwo Amelung
Being Modern without the West? On the Futility of Self-Assertion in Chinese Thought
Marc A. Matten
Numbers as Signs: Conceptual Entanglements between Mathematics, Divination, and Language in the Modern Era
Andrea Bréard
III. Prognostication
Mis-reading the Signs, or: Theorizing Divination— Chinese and Greek
Lisa A. Raphals
Prognostication and Christianity in the Early Middle Ages
Klaus Herbers
Anxiety and Fear: Hexagrams “Ge” (49) and “Ding” (50) in the Zhouyi daquan
Tze-ki Hon
„An jenem Tag“. Über Prognose im Koran
Georges Tamer
Divination and Globalization: Some Comparative Perspectives on Geomancy in Premodern East Asia
Richard J. Smith
A Future Written in the Past: Prognostication in Diary Novels of Republican China
Carsten Storm
Fate, Freedom, and Will in European and Chinese Discourses on Chinese Tragedies
Natascha Gentz
Amelung, Iwo / Kurtz, Joachim
Publication Date:
2018
Publisher:
München Iudicium
Abtract:
Over more than 40 years, the sinologist Michael Lackner has studied a broad range of issues in China’s past and present. On the occasion of his 65th birthday, this volume brings together essays from friends, collaborators, colleagues, and students dedicated to the three fields of research in which he has made his most lasting contributions: philology, the histories of science and thought, and the study of prognostication. Michael Lackner’s work in all these areas is connected by an intense engagement with “signs”—texts and images but also objects, dreams, portents and omens—and the semiotic, epistemic and political contexts in which they become meaningful. The 25 contributions presented here highlight the fertility of such a transdisciplinary approach. Reading signs in material, textual, and visual sources dating from 2000 BCE to the present, scholars from four continents address themes as diverse as early Chinese ritual and cosmology; imperial and modern Chinese poetry, prose and drama; Chinese alchemy, astronomy and mathematics; the theory and practice of divination and prognosis; as well as exegetical traditions, political rhetoric, and problems of translation. Many articles examine entanglements between China and the West and offer comparative perspectives on developments in Europe and the Islamicate world.
Table of Contents:
List of Publications by Michael Lackner 朗宓榭
To a Reader of Signs: A Dedication
Iwo Amelung and Joachim Kurtz
I. Philology
The Earliest Chinese Bells in Light of New Archaeological Discoveries
Lothar von Falkenhausen
Reading Newly Discovered Texts: Approaches to the Guodian Text “Zhongxin zhi dao” 忠信之道
Michael Schimmelpfennig
The Language of Heaven
Rudolf G. Wagner
Sage: An Unreadable Sign
Chu Pingyi
Du Fu’s Long Gaze Back: Fate, History, Heroism, Authorship
Martin Kern
Sources for his Chinese Book
Christoph Harbsmeier
The Chinese Traditional Method of “Full or Vacant Characters” and the Grammar of Port-Royal
Uchida Keiichi
The Formation of Modern Written Chinese: Writing Categories and Polysyllabic Words
Shen Guowei
How to Modernize Hermeneutics: Readings of Rilke’s Late Poems
Christoph König
II. History
Laozi and Internal Alchemy
Fabrizio Pregadio
Drunken Talk: Political Discourse and Alcohol Consumption during the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127 CE)
Dagmar Schäfer
Nara Singde, Assimilation, Acculturation, and Identity in the Early Qing
Erling von Mende
The Delayed “Triumph” of Yan Ruoqu’s Evidential Studies during the Qianlong Era
Benjamin A. Elman
Scientific News or Prognostic Interpretation: Chinese Records of the 1874 Transit of Venus
Lü Lingfeng
Local Refractions of a Global Concept
Joachim Kurtz
The Role of Alchemy in Constructing the Chinese Scientific Tradition
Iwo Amelung
Being Modern without the West? On the Futility of Self-Assertion in Chinese Thought
Marc A. Matten
Numbers as Signs: Conceptual Entanglements between Mathematics, Divination, and Language in the Modern Era
Andrea Bréard
III. Prognostication
Mis-reading the Signs, or: Theorizing Divination— Chinese and Greek
Lisa A. Raphals
Prognostication and Christianity in the Early Middle Ages
Klaus Herbers
Anxiety and Fear: Hexagrams “Ge” (49) and “Ding” (50) in the Zhouyi daquan
Tze-ki Hon
„An jenem Tag“. Über Prognose im Koran
Georges Tamer
Divination and Globalization: Some Comparative Perspectives on Geomancy in Premodern East Asia
Richard J. Smith
A Future Written in the Past: Prognostication in Diary Novels of Republican China
Carsten Storm
Fate, Freedom, and Will in European and Chinese Discourses on Chinese Tragedies
Natascha Gentz
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
睡虎地秦簡訳注―秦律十八種・效律・秦律雑抄―
Editor:
工藤元男 (Motoo Kudō)
Publisher:
汲古書院
Publication Date:
May 2018
Table of Contents:
序文
凡例
「秦律十八種」訳注
田律／厩苑律／倉律／金布律／関市律／工律／工人程／
均工律／徭律／司空律／軍爵律／置吏律／效律／
伝食律／行書律／内史雑／尉雑／属邦律
「效律」訳注
「秦律雑抄」訳注
工藤元男 (Motoo Kudō)
Publisher:
汲古書院
Publication Date:
May 2018
Table of Contents:
序文
凡例
「秦律十八種」訳注
田律／厩苑律／倉律／金布律／関市律／工律／工人程／
均工律／徭律／司空律／軍爵律／置吏律／效律／
伝食律／行書律／内史雑／尉雑／属邦律
「效律」訳注
「秦律雑抄」訳注
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