This book is a timely response to a rather urgent call to seek an updated methodology in rereading and reappraising early Chinese texts in light of newly discovered early writings. For a long time, the concept of authorship in the formation and transmission of early Chinese texts has been misunderstood. The nominal author who should mainly function as a guide to text formation ...(展开全部)

Leading scholars of ancient Chinese history, literature, religion, and archaeology consider the presence and use of texts in religious and political ritual. Through balanced attention to both the received literary tradition and the wide range of recently excavated artefacts, manuscripts, and inscriptions, their combined efforts reveal the rich and multilayered interplay of text...(展开全部)

In this book, Alexander Beecroft explores how the earliest poetry in Greece (Homeric epic and lyric) and China (the Canon of Songs) evolved from being local, oral, and anonymous to being textualized, interpreted, and circulated over increasingly wider areas. Beecroft re-examines representations of authorship as found in poetic biographies such as Lives of Homer and the Zuozhuan...(展开全部)

By the middle of the third century B.C.E. in China there were individuals who sought to become transcendents (xian)--deathless, godlike beings endowed with supernormal powers. This quest for transcendence became a major form of religious expression and helped lay the foundation on which the first Daoist religion was built. Both xian and those who aspired to this exalted status ...(展开全部)

By the middle of the third century B.C.E. in China there were individuals who sought to become transcendents (xian)--deathless, godlike beings endowed with supernormal powers. This quest for transcendence became a major form of religious expression and helped lay the foundation on which the first Daoist religion was built. Both xian and those who aspired to this exalted status ...(展开全部)

This groundbreaking book 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, intellect...(展开全部)

This groundbreaking book 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, intellect...(展开全部)

Scholarship on early Chinese thought has long tended to treat texts as mere repositories of ideas rather than as meaningful objects in their own right. Not only does this approach present an idealised account of China’s intellectual past, but it also imposes artificial boundaries between textual and philosophical traditions. As the first study to treat text as a cultural phenom...(展开全部)