Orthodoxy in Late Imperial China

Orthodoxy in Late Imperial China
Author: Kwang-Ching Liu
Publisher: Studies on China
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2021-02-12
Genre:
ISBN: 9780520301870

For many people, orthodoxy in late imperial China means Confucianism, or more precisely, Neo-Confucianism. Unlike most studies of Chinese values, which approach the subject as a philosophical and religious system, this book focuses on the interaction between Neo-Confucian beliefs and Chinese political and social institutions. It reveals a Confucianism that stood for far more than mere benevolent government, individual morality, and scholarly cultivation. In the essays presented here, Confucian idealism and transcendence become part of a system of sacred obligations and loyalties operating in the context of the imperial state and the family. These careful case studies examine many facets of late imperial society to create a complex picture of Chinese life. Among other things, they provide a look at the official worship system, mid-Ch'ing scholarly academies, the special status of tenants/servants, and the lineage feuds that were rampant on the southeast coast. The authors bring out the cultural significance of state and family rituals. They depict worried patriarchs composing instructions for the guidance of their children and country magistrates prescribing punishments according to the ritual status of the culprit. A debate between two viewpoints develops: Was orthodoxy a "mode of statecraft," or was it one of the ultimate concerns not only of the Confucian schools but of mainstream Taoism and Buddhism as well? The authors argue that Chinese civilization was characterized by religious and philosophical pluralism and moral orthodoxy. The implications they see for a socioethical doctrine supported by and in support of political authority will be of interest to students of comparative history and civilization. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

Heterodoxy in Late Imperial China

Heterodoxy in Late Imperial China
Author: Kwang-Ching Liu
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 492
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780824825386

Ten international academics explore heterodoxy dissent challenging the beliefs and meanings of the established norm in late Imperial China. In this process, they trace the origins of the cultural and intellectual protests to aspects of Daoism and Buddhism in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911)

Christian Heretics in Late Imperial China

Christian Heretics in Late Imperial China
Author: Lars Peter Laamann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2013-05-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134429983

Following the prohibition of missionary activity after 1724, China's Christians were effectively cut off from all foreign theological guidance. The ensuing isolation forced China's Christian communities to become self-reliant in perpetuating the basic principles of their faith. Left to their own devices, the missionary seed developed into a panoply of indigenous traditions, with Christian ancestry as the common denominator. Christianity thus underwent the same process of inculturation as previous religious traditions in China, such as Buddhism and Judaism. As the guardian of orthodox morality, the prosecuting state sought to exercise all-pervading control over popular thoughts and social functions. Filling the gap within the discourse of Christianity in China and also as part of the wider analysis of religion in late Imperial China, this study presents the campaigns against Christians during this period as part and parcel of the campaign against 'heresy' and 'heretical' movements in general.

Orthodox Passions

Orthodox Passions
Author: Maram Epstein
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2021-02-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1684176069

In this groundbreaking interdisciplinary study, Maram Epstein identifies filial piety as the dominant expression of love in Qing dynasty texts. At a time when Manchu regulations made chastity the primary metaphor for obedience and social duty, filial discourse increasingly embraced the dramatic and passionate excesses associated with late-Ming chastity narratives. Qing texts, especially those from the Jiangnan region, celebrate modes of filial piety that conflicted with the interests of the patriarchal family and the state. Analyzing filial narratives from a wide range of primary texts, including local gazetteers, autobiographical and biographical nianpu records, and fiction, Epstein shows the diversity of acts constituting exemplary filial piety. This context, Orthodox Passions argues, enables a radical rereading of the great novel of manners The Story of the Stone (ca. 1760), whose absence of filial affections and themes make it an outlier in the eighteenth-century sentimental landscape. By decentering romantic feeling as the dominant expression of love during the High Qing, Orthodox Passions calls for a new understanding of the affective landscape of late imperial China.

A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China

A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China
Author: Benjamin A. Elman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 900
Release: 2000-03-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520921474

In this multidimensional analysis, Benjamin A. Elman uses over a thousand newly available examination records from the Yuan, Ming, and Ch'ing dynasties, 1315-1904, to explore the social, political, and cultural dimensions of the civil examination system, one of the most important institutions in Chinese history. For over five hundred years, the most important positions within the dynastic government were usually filled through these difficult examinations, and every other year some one to two million people from all levels of society attempted them. Covering the late imperial system from its inception to its demise, Elman revises our previous understanding of how the system actually worked, including its political and cultural machinery, the unforeseen consequences when it was unceremoniously scrapped by modernist reformers, and its long-term historical legacy. He argues that the Ming-Ch'ing civil examinations from 1370 to 1904 represented a substantial break with T'ang-Sung dynasty literary examinations from 650 to 1250. Late imperial examinations also made "Tao Learning," Neo-Confucian learning, the dynastic orthodoxy in official life and in literati culture. The intersections between elite social life, popular culture, and religion that are also considered reveal the full scope of the examination process throughout the late empire.

The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China

The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China
Author: Kai-wing Chow
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 358
Release: 1996-12-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0804765782

This pathbreaking work argues that the major intellectual trend in China from the seventeenth through the early nineteenth century was Confucian ritualism, as expressed in ethics, classical learning, and discourse on lineage. Reviews "Chow has produced a work of superb scholarship, fluently written and beautifully researched. . . . One of the landmarks of the current reconstruction of the social philosophy of the Qing dynasty. . . . Chow's book is indispensable. It has illuminating analyses of many mainstream writers, institutions, and social categories in eighteenth-century China which have never previously been examined." —Canadian Journal of History "Chow's monograph moves ritual to center stage in late imperial social and intellectual history, and the author makes a powerful case for doing so. . . . Because the author understands the intellectual history of late Ming and Qing as the history of a movement, or successive movements, of fundamental social reform, he has also made an important contribution to social and political history as these were related to intellectual history." —Journal of Chinese Religion "Chow's book is an excellent contribution to recent scholarship on the intellectual history of the Confucian tradition and provides a balance for other studies that have emphasized ideas to the exclusion of symbols." —The Historian

Popular Culture in Late Imperial China

Popular Culture in Late Imperial China
Author: David Johnson
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2023-11-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520340124

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

Competing Discourses

Competing Discourses
Author: Maram Epstein
Publisher: Harvard Univ Asia Center
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2001
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780674005129

In the traditional Chinese symbolic vocabulary, the construction of gender was never far from debates about ritual propriety, desire, and even cosmic harmony. Competing Discourses maps the aesthetic and semantic meanings associated with gender in the Ming-Qing vernacular novel through close readings of five long narratives: Marriage Bonds to Awaken the World, Dream of the Red Chamber, A Country Codger's Words of Exposure, Flowers in the Mirror, and A Tale of Heroic Lovers. Epstein argues that the authors of these novels manipulated gendered terms to achieve structural coherence. These patterns are, however, frequently at odds with other gendered structures in the texts, and authors exploited these conflicts to discuss the problem of orthodox behavior versus the cult of feeling.

Education and Society in Late Imperial China, 1600-1900

Education and Society in Late Imperial China, 1600-1900
Author: Benjamin A. Elman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 593
Release: 2023-11-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520913639

This comprehensive volume integrates the history of late imperial China with the history of education over three centuries, revealing the significance of education in Chinese social, political, and intellectual life. A collaboration between social and intellectual historians, these fifteen essays provide the most wide-ranging study in English on China's education in the centuries before the modern revolution.