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

by Connery, Christopher Leigh

• ISBN13: 9780847687398
• ISBN10: 0847687392
• Format: Paperback
• 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
Preface
Acknowledgments
Names and Chronology
Introduction	p. 1
Textual Authority and Textual Practice	p. 21
Texts, Textual Authority, Literacy, Ideology	p. 21
The Origin of Writing	p. 33
Writing, Word, Lexicon	p. 37
Literacy, Canonicity, Transmission, and Text-systems	p. 40
Texts in Their Place: Han Bibliography	p. 53
Textuality Takes Command	p. 59
Written on Bamboo, Silk, Wood, Stone, and Paper: The Materiality of the Text	p. 63
Reading and Writing	p. 71
The Shi	p. 79
Who Were the Shi?	p. 79
A Brief Social History of the Latter Han Shi	p. 81
Regional or Imperial?	p. 84
The Affair of the Proscribed Factions (danggu), 167-184 C.E.	p. 86
The Shi and Dynastic Collapse	p. 92
Lifestyle, Exemplary Life, Textualized Life	p. 95
Re-theorizing the Shi: Sociotextual Formation	p. 98
Theorizing the Relationship between the Shi and the State	p. 103
Social Texts	p. 111
The Specter of Asociality	p. 111
Work, Family, State, and Homosociality	p. 114
Late Han Philosophical Writing on Homosocial Relationships	p. 118
Evaluation and Recommendation	p. 128
Reading the Person	p. 132
Literature	p. 141
What Is Chinese Literature?	p. 141
Late Han Poetry and the Subjectivity Question	p. 146
Orality	p. 153
Social Poetic Practice	p. 157
Intertextual Composition	p. 165
In Conclusion: A Humanist Fantasy	p. 169
Group Composition of Fu	p. 173
Glossary of Select Chinese Terms and Phrases	p. 177
Bibliography	p. 187
Index	p. 205
About the Author	p. 209
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