Mourning in Late Imperial China

Mourning in Late Imperial China
Author: Norman Kutcher
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2006-11-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521030182

To win the approval of China's native elites, Qing China's new Manchu leaders developed an ambitious plan to return Confucianism to civil society by observing laborious and time-consuming mourning rituals, the touchstones of a well-ordered Confucian society. The first to do so in any language, Norman Kutcher's study of mourning looks beneath the rhetoric to demonstrate how the state--unwilling to make the sacrifices that a genuine commitment to proper mourning demanded--quietly but forcefully undermined, not reinvigorated, the Confucian mourning system.

Intimate Memory

Intimate Memory
Author: Martin W. Huang
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2018-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1438469012

In the first study of its kind about the role played by intimate memory in the mourning literature of late imperial China, Martin W. Huang focuses on the question of how men mourned and wrote about women to whom they were closely related. Drawing upon memoirs, epitaphs, biographies, litanies, and elegiac poems, Huang explores issues such as how intimacy shaped the ways in which bereaved male authors conceived of womanhood and how such conceptualizations were inevitably also acts of self-reflection about themselves as men. Their memorial writings reveal complicated self-images as husbands, brothers, sons, and educated Confucian males, while their representations of women are much more complex and diverse than the representations we find in more public genres such as Confucian female exemplar biographies.

Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China

Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China
Author: James L. Watson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 362
Release: 1988
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780520060814

During the late imperial era (1500-1911), China, though divided by ethnic, linguistic, and regional differences at least as great as those prevailing in Europe, enjoyed a remarkable solidarity. What held Chinese society together for so many centuries? Some scholars have pointed to the institutional control over the written word as instrumental in promoting cultural homogenization; others, the manipulation of the performing arts. This volume, comprised of essays by both anthropologists and historians, furthers this important discussion by examining the role of death rituals in the unification of Chinese culture.

True to Her Word

True to Her Word
Author: Weijing Lu
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2008-02-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 080478678X

This path-breaking book examines the broad cultural, social, and gender meanings of the "faithful maiden" cult in late imperial China (1368–1911). Across the empire, an increasing number of young women or "faithful maidens," defied their parents' wishes and chose either to live out their lives as widows upon the death of a fiancé or killed themselves to join their fiancé in death. The book analyzes the familial conflicts, government policies, ideological controversies, and personal emotions surrounding the cult. Concentrating on the dramatic acts of spirit wedding and suicide, the faithful maidens' unique code of conduct, and the extraordinary life journey of "virgin mothers," Lu documents the ideological, psychological, cultural, and economic aspects of these young women's mentality and behavior, and the implications of this behavior for their families and the broader society. The book's narrative of the faithful maiden cult interweaves late imperial political, cultural, social and intellectual history, thus, providing a new window onto the history of the late imperial period.

Passionate Women

Passionate Women
Author: Paul Ropp
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2021-07-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004483020

This is a collection of original essays which focuses on the causes, meanings and significance of female suicides in Ming and Qing China. It is the first attempt in English-language scholarship to revise earlier views of female self-destruction that had been shaped by the May Fourth Movement and anti-Confucian critiques of Chinese culture, and to consider the matter of female suicide in the wider context of more recent scholarship on women and gender relations in late imperial China. The essays also reveal the world of tensions, conflicting demands and expectations, and a variety of means by which both women and men made moral sense of their lives in late imperial China. The volume closes with an extensive bibliography of relevant and important Chinese, Japanese, and Western publications related to female suicide in late imperial China.

Intimate Memory

Intimate Memory
Author: Martin W. Huang
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2018-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1438468997

Sheds new light on pre-modern Chinese gender relationships in the context of marriage, male Confucian literati self-presentation, and social networks. In the first study of its kind about the role played by intimate memory in the mourning literature of late imperial China, Martin W. Huang focuses on the question of how men mourned and wrote about women to whom they were closely related. Drawing upon memoirs, epitaphs, biographies, litanies, and elegiac poems, Huang explores issues such as how intimacy shaped the ways in which bereaved male authors conceived of womanhood and how such conceptualizations were inevitably also acts of self-reflection about themselves as men. Their memorial writings reveal complicated self-images as husbands, brothers, sons, and educated Confucian males, while their representations of women are much more complex and diverse than the representations we find in more public genres such as Confucian female exemplar biographies.

Mourning in Late Imperial China

Mourning in Late Imperial China
Author: Norman Kutcher
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 1999-08-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521624398

To win the approval of China's native elites, Qing China's new Manchu leaders developed an ambitious plan to return Confucianism to civil society by observing laborious and time-consuming mourning rituals, the touchstones of a well-ordered Confucian society. The first to do so in any language, Norman Kutcher's study of mourning looks beneath the rhetoric to demonstrate how the state--unwilling to make the sacrifices that a genuine commitment to proper mourning demanded--quietly but forcefully undermined, not reinvigorated, the Confucian mourning system.

Mourning in Late Imperial China

Mourning in Late Imperial China
Author: Norman Alan Kutcher
Publisher:
Total Pages: 210
Release: 1999
Genre: China
ISBN:

Kutcher's study of mourning demonstrates how Qing China's Manchu leaders quietly but forcefully undermined, not reinvigorated, the Confucian mourning system.

Eunuch and Emperor in the Great Age of Qing Rule

Eunuch and Emperor in the Great Age of Qing Rule
Author: Norman A. Kutcher
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2018-07-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520969847

Eunuch and Emperor in the Great Age of Qing Rule offers a new interpretation of eunuchs and their connection to imperial rule in the first century and a half of the Qing dynasty (1644–1800). This period encompassed the reigns of three of China’s most important emperors, men who were deeply affected by the great eunuch corruption of the fallen Ming dynasty. In this groundbreaking and deeply researched book, the author explores how Qing emperors sought to prevent a return of the harmful excesses of eunuchs and how eunuchs flourished in the face of the restrictions imposed upon them. We meet powerful eunuchs who faithfully served, and in some cases ultimately betrayed, their emperors. We also meet ordinary eunuchs whose lives, punctuated by dramas large and small, provide a fascinating perspective on the Qing palace world.

Death Rituals and Politics in Northern Song China

Death Rituals and Politics in Northern Song China
Author: Mihwa Choi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 019045976X

This study examines how political and legal disputes regarding the performance of death rituals contributed to shape a revival of Confucianism in eleventh-century Northern Song China.