The Empire of the Text Writing and Authority in Early Imperial China

by Connery, Christopher Leigh

• ISBN13: 9780847687381
• ISBN10: 0847687384
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-12-23
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Summary

This unique study argues that in the Qin-Han period, there arose in China a regime of textual authority-one that overlapped but did not coincide with imperial authority. Drawing on a wide range of research and theory, Connery makes an original contribution to the analysis of early imperial elite culture, particularly in the fields of literature and linguistics, intellectual, and institutional history.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	vii	(2)
Preface	ix	(2)
Acknowledgments	xi	(2)
Names and Chronology	xiii
Introduction	1	(20)
Chapter One: Textual Authority and Textual Practice	21	(58)
Texts, Textual Authority, Literacy, Ideology	21	(12)
The Origin of Writing	33	(4)
Writing, Word, Lexicon	37	(3)
Literacy, Canonicity, Transmission, and Text-systems	40	(13)
Texts in Their Place: Han Bibliography	53	(6)
Textuality Takes Command	59	(4)
Written on Bamboo, Silk, Wood, Stone, and Paper: The Materiality of the Text	63	(8)
Reading and Writing	71	(8)
Chapter Two: The Shi	79	(32)
Who Were the Shi?	79	(2)
A Brief Social History of the Latter Han Shi	81	(3)
Regional or Imperial?	84	(2)
The Affair of the Proscribed Factions (danggu), 167-184 C.E.	86	(6)
The Shi and Dynastic Collapse	92	(3)
Lifestyle, Exemplary Life, Textualized Life	95	(3)
Re-theorizing the Shi: Sociotextual Formation	98	(5)
Theorizing the Relationship Between the Shi and the State	103	(8)
Chapter Three: Social Texts	111	(30)
The Specter of Asociality	111	(3)
Work, Family, State, and Homosociality	114	(4)
Late Han Philosophical Writing on Homosocial Relationships	118	(10)
Evaluation and Recommendation	128	(4)
Reading the Person	132	(9)
Chapter Four: Literature	141	(32)
What Is Chinese Literature?	141	(5)
Late Han Poetry and the Subjectivity Question	146	(7)
Orality	153	(4)
Social Poetic Practice	157	(8)
Intertextual Composition	165	(4)
In Conclusion: A Humanist Fantasy	169	(4)
Appendix: Group Composition of Fu	173	(4)
Glossary of Select Chinese Terms and Phrases	177	(10)
Bibliography	187	(18)
Index	205	(4)
About the Author	209