The Writing of Weddings in Middle-Period China: Text and Ritual Practice in the Eighth Through Fourteenth Centuries

by Pee, Christian De

• ISBN13: 9780791470749
• ISBN10: 0791470741
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-01-01
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

Approaching writing as a form of cultural practice and understanding text as an historical object, this book not only recovers elements of the ritual practice of Middle-Period weddings, but also reassesses the relationship between texts and the Middle-Period past. Its fourfold narrative of the writing of weddings and its spirited engagement with the texts-ritual manuals, engagement letters, nuptial songs, calendars and almanacs, and legal texts-offer a form and style for a cultural history that accommodates the particularities of the sources of the Chinese imperial past. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Christian de Pee is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Michigan

Table of Contents

Illustrations	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
Introduction: The Practice of the Text	p. 1
The Practice of the Classical Text: The Writing of Weddings in the Middle Period	p. 2
The Practice of the Academic Text: The Writing of Weddings in Modern and Postmodern History	p. 14
Ritual Manuals: Exegetical Hermeneutics and the Re-Embodiment of Antiquity	p. 21
Canonical Weddings: Fragments and Hermeneutics	p. 27
Rites of the Kaiyuan Period: The Merging of Canon and Precedent	p. 34
Manuals of Letters and Ceremonies: The Hermeneutics of Practice and the Preservation of Ritual	p. 39
The Hermeneutical Shift in the Northern Song: Epigraphy, Archaeology, and the Identity of Past and Present	p. 45
Ritual Manuals of the Northern Song: The Hermeneutics of Text and the Embodiment of Antiquity	p. 50
Toward a New Ritual Scripture: Zhu Xi's Family Rituals	p. 72
Conclusion	p. 81
Wedding Correspondence and Nuptial Songs: Writing as Cultural Capital and Text as Ritual Object	p. 89
Cultural Capital and the Inscription of Ritual Time in Wedding Correspondence	p. 93
Social Boundaries and Symbolic Capital in Writing Manuals	p. 104
Ritual Time and Sexual Metaphors in Wedding Addresses, Poems, and Jokes	p. 116
Conclusion	p. 131
Calendars, Almanacs, Miracle Tales, and Medical Texts: Cosmic Cycles and the Liminal Affairs of Man	p. 137
Patterns of Auspicious and Inauspicious Time in Calendars	p. 147
The Calculation of Cosmic Blessings and Dangers in Almanacs	p. 152
The Blessings and Dangers of Weddings in Miracle Tales	p. 164
The Vulnerable and Dangerous Body of the Bride in Miracle Tales and Medical Texts	p. 168
Conclusion	p. 174
Legal Codes, Verdicts, and Contracts: Universal Order and Local Practice	p. 179
Marriage and the Universal Order: The Annotated Tang Code and the Song Penal Code	p. 187
Universal Law and Local Practice: A Collection of Pure and Lucid Verdicts	p. 191
Interference with Ritual Practice: Imperial Canon of Sacred Governance and Comprehensive Institutions	p. 201
Conclusion	p. 212
Conclusion. Texts and Tombs, Ritual and History	p. 221
The Practice of the Tomb: Material Traces of Ritual	p. 228
The Practice of the Text: Written Traces of Ritual	p. 242
The Practice of History: Toward a Cultural History of the Middle Period	p. 246
Glossary	p. 251
Notes	p. 257
Bibliography	p. 317
Index	p. 357
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