Textual Patterns and Cosmic Designs in Early China

Textual Patterns and Cosmic Designs in Early China
Author: Benoît Vermander
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2024-05-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1040010083

Via a hermeneutics focused on Chinese numerology and concentric arrangements, this book offers a novel construal of the textual universe proper to early China writings. The author lays bare distinguishable patterns of textual composition while relating them to corresponding patterns of thinking. He differentiates rhetorical variants through detailed studies of the Zhuangzi’s Inner chapters, the Laozi, the Analects, and the Huainanzi. The philosophical depth and relevance of the Chinese ancient worldview appear in a fresh light when one unearths the patterns into which its content is embedded. The focus on textual patterns and rhetorical arrangements also facilitates the reading of Chinese classics alongside other traditions. The book will be a valuable reference for scholars and graduate students studying Chinese literary criticism, Chinese philosophy, and comparative philosophy.

All About Chinese Culture

All About Chinese Culture
Author: Yonghong Wang
Publisher: Shanghai Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2023-04-20
Genre: Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN: 1938368908

Are you curious about the diversified views in “Contention of the Hundred Schools of Thought”? What's the origin of the Chinese zodiac signs? Or the history of the Chinese tea culture that is popular around the world? As one of the few ancient civilizations in the world, China features her a multidimensional cultural deposit in consistency and unification, endowing her history with a sense of perplexity and enchantment. Would you find it quite difficult to study Chinese culture? Well, relax. Together in this book, we shall follow the historical trace of 50 national treasures of the museums through the time tunnel, and enjoy their stories buried in the past 5000 years. They would be your company to explore the magnificent world of ancient China. In this book, the Chinese history is divided into eight periods. The treasures selected as samples are precious collections from museums around the world, including ceramics, jades, bronze wares, paintings, bamboo slips, sculptures, gold wares and silver wares. Rich in photographs and illustrations, the book introduces the most representative academic thoughts, moral education, religious beliefs, and folk customs in every period of the ancient China, and describes the interaction of Chinese and foreign cultures, as well as the spirit of the times and the cultural characteristics hidden behind them. In this way, the most crucial social concepts and the most attractive anecdotes in history will be revealed, and a sketch of Chinese culture will be unfolding in front of you through the rising and falling of those ancient dynasties. The treasures will no longer be resting in silence, as they are about to tell their own stories and present you with a journey of knowledge and visual feast. Let's take a stroll along the glory years to unveil the Chinese culture.

The Construction of Space in Early China

The Construction of Space in Early China
Author: Mark Edward Lewis
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0791482499

This book examines the formation of the Chinese empire through its reorganization and reinterpretation of its basic spatial units: the human body, the household, the city, the region, and the world. The central theme of the book is the way all these forms of ordered space were reshaped by the project of unification and how, at the same time, that unification was constrained and limited by the necessary survival of the units on which it was based. Consequently, as Mark Edward Lewis shows, each level of spatial organization could achieve order and meaning only within an encompassing, superior whole: the body within the household, the household within the lineage and state, the city within the region, and the region within the world empire, while each level still contained within itself the smaller units from which it was formed. The unity that was the empire's highest goal avoided collapse back into the original chaos of nondistinction only by preserving within itself the very divisions on the basis of family or region that it claimed to transcend.

Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China

Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China
Author: Francesca Bray
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 786
Release: 2007-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9047422651

This collection offers a challenging new interpretation of technical knowledge in Chinese thought and practice. Conveying technical knowledge in China through charts, plans or drawings (tu) dates back to antiquity. Earlier studies focused on specialised forms of tu like maps or drawings of machines. Here, however, tu is identified in Chinese terms, viz. as a philosophical category of knowledge production: visual templates for action, spanning a range from mandala to modernist mapping projects, inseparable from writing but with distinctive powers of communication. A distinction is made between two principal types of tu: ritual/symbolic and representational, highlighting essential issues such as historical shifts in their significance, the relations between tu and political power, media for inscribing tu and the impact of printing, and encounters with the West.

A Companion to Chinese Art

A Companion to Chinese Art
Author: Martin J. Powers
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 596
Release: 2022-04-26
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1119121698

Exploring the history of art in China from its earliest incarnations to the present day, this comprehensive volume includes two dozen newly-commissioned essays spanning the theories, genres, and media central to Chinese art and theory throughout its history. Provides an exceptional collection of essays promoting a comparative understanding of China’s long record of cultural production Brings together an international team of scholars from East and West, whose contributions range from an overview of pre-modern theory, to those exploring calligraphy, fine painting, sculpture, accessories, and more Articulates the direction in which the field of Chinese art history is moving, as well as providing a roadmap for historians interested in comparative study or theory Proposes new and revisionist interpretations of the literati tradition, which has long been an important staple of Chinese art history Offers a rich insight into China’s social and political institutions, religious and cultural practices, and intellectual traditions, alongside Chinese art history, theory, and criticism

The Cambridge History of Ancient China

The Cambridge History of Ancient China
Author: Michael Loewe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 1192
Release: 1999-03-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521470308

The Cambridge History of Ancient China provides a survey of the institutional and cultural history of pre-imperial China.

Astrology and Cosmology in Early China

Astrology and Cosmology in Early China
Author: David W. Pankenier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 617
Release: 2013-10-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107006724

Drawing on a vast array of scholarship, this pioneering text illustrates how profoundly astronomical phenomena shaped ancient Chinese civilization.

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religions

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religions
Author: Randall L. Nadeau
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2012-05-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1405190310

Comprising the most up-to-date, interdisciplinary research on the study of Chinese religious beliefs and cultural practices, this volume explores the rich and complex religious and philosophical traditions that have developed and flourished in one of the world's oldest civilizations. Covers the main Chinese traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism as well as Christianity and Islam Features a unique organizational structure, with groups of readings focused on historical, traditions-based, and topical elements of Chinese religion Explores a number of contemporary religious topics, including gender, nature, asceticism, material culture, and gods and spirits Brings together a team of authors who are experts in their sub-fields, providing readers with the latest research in a rapidly growing discipline

Chinese Women in the Imperial Past

Chinese Women in the Imperial Past
Author: Harriet Zurndorfer
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2022-08-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004490167

The present volume is the result of a Leiden University workshop on women in imperial China by a group of international scholars. In recent years Chinese women and gender studies have attracted more and more attention, and this book is one of the first efforts to focus on major aspects of this subject. It covers a wide range of topics and disciplines, including bibliography, demography, history, legal studies, literature, history of medicine, and philosophy. Chinese Women in the Imperial Past can rightly be seen as connected with the new Brill journal NAN NÜ, Men, Women and Gender in Early and Imperial China, which was founded to provide the scholarly community with a lasting forum in which the subject of Chinese women and gender can be dealt with in its own right.