Professor Chou here offers a new perspective on the rise and fall of the Kung-an School as a key to understanding the development of Chinese literary criticism in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. His book focuses on the literary theories of YUan Hung-tao (1568-1610)--the leader of the Kung-an School--and his two brothers. Its core is a detailed study of the poetry and prose of YUan Hung-tao, comparing his theories with his writings and analyzing systematically the merits and flaws of his work. The volume concludes with a discussion of the legacy of the Kung-an School,...

The study traces the economic and demographic history of a corner of China's southeast coast from the third to the thirteenth centuries, looking at the relationship between changes in the agrarian and urban economies of the area and their connections to the expanding role of domestic and foreign trade. It provides a previously unexplored perspective on the role of commercialized production and trade in a regional economy in the premodern era and demonstrates that trade was able to drive change in a premodern economy in a way that has not generally been recognized.