In Pursuit of the Great Peace: Han Dynasty Classicism and the Making of Early Medieval Literati Culture
Through an examination of the Great Peace (taiping), one of the first utopian visions in Chinese history, Zhao Lu describes the transformation of literati culture that occurred during the Han Dynasty. Driven by anxiety over losing the mandate of Heaven, the imperial court encouraged classicism in order to establish the Great Peace and follow Heaven's will. But instead of treating the literati as puppets of competing and imagined lineages, Zhao uses sociological methods to reconstruct their daily lives and to show how they created their own thought by adopting, modifying, and opposing the work of their contemporaries and predecessors. The literati who served as bureaucrats in the first century BCE gradually became classicists who depended on social networking as they traveled to study the classics. By the second century CE, classicism had dissolved in this traveling culture and the literati began to expand the corpus of knowledge beyond the accepted canon. Thus, far from being static, classicism in Han China was full of innovation, and ultimately gave birth to both literary writing and religious Daoism.
1130006891
In Pursuit of the Great Peace: Han Dynasty Classicism and the Making of Early Medieval Literati Culture
Through an examination of the Great Peace (taiping), one of the first utopian visions in Chinese history, Zhao Lu describes the transformation of literati culture that occurred during the Han Dynasty. Driven by anxiety over losing the mandate of Heaven, the imperial court encouraged classicism in order to establish the Great Peace and follow Heaven's will. But instead of treating the literati as puppets of competing and imagined lineages, Zhao uses sociological methods to reconstruct their daily lives and to show how they created their own thought by adopting, modifying, and opposing the work of their contemporaries and predecessors. The literati who served as bureaucrats in the first century BCE gradually became classicists who depended on social networking as they traveled to study the classics. By the second century CE, classicism had dissolved in this traveling culture and the literati began to expand the corpus of knowledge beyond the accepted canon. Thus, far from being static, classicism in Han China was full of innovation, and ultimately gave birth to both literary writing and religious Daoism.
36.95
In Stock
5
1
![In Pursuit of the Great Peace: Han Dynasty Classicism and the Making of Early Medieval Literati Culture](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.11.4)
In Pursuit of the Great Peace: Han Dynasty Classicism and the Making of Early Medieval Literati Culture
350![In Pursuit of the Great Peace: Han Dynasty Classicism and the Making of Early Medieval Literati Culture](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.11.4)
In Pursuit of the Great Peace: Han Dynasty Classicism and the Making of Early Medieval Literati Culture
350
36.95
In Stock
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781438474922 |
---|---|
Publisher: | State University of New York Press |
Publication date: | 01/02/2020 |
Series: | SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture |
Pages: | 350 |
Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
From the B&N Reads Blog