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,...

Thomas Buoye examines the impact of large-scale economic change on social conflict in eighteenth-century China. He draws on a large number of documented cases of violent property disputes to recreate the social tensions fostered by the development of property rights, an unprecedented growing population, and the increasing strain on land and resources. This book challenges the "markets" and "moral economy" theories of economic behavior. Applying the theories of Douglass North for the first time to this subject, Buoye uses an institutional framework to understand seemingly irrational economic...

This work studies one of China's greatest poets, Tu Fu, as both cultural icon and literary genius.

This is the first comprehensive study in a Western language of Liu Tsung-yUan, one of the finest prose stylists China has ever produced. Liu was not only a leading writer of T'ang China (618-906) but also an important thinker of his time. Examining every major aspect of his life and thought, the book also discusses the relationship of his thought to mid-T'ang intellectual changes and offers a new interpretation of the origins of a key intellectual watershed, the rise of Neo-Confucianism in the eleventh century.

To win the approval of China's native elites, Qing China's new Manchu leaders developed an ambitious plan to return Confucianism to civil society by observing laborious and time-consuming mourning rituals, the touchstones of a well-ordered Confucian society. The first to do so in any language, Norman Kutcher's study of mourning looks beneath the rhetoric to demonstrate how the state--unwilling to make the sacrifices that a genuine commitment to proper mourning demanded--quietly but forcefully undermined, not reinvigorated, the Confucian mourning system.

Stone Lake is the first translation and study in a Western language of the poetry of Fan Chengda, one of the most famous Chinese poets of the twelfth century. For the nonspecialist reader the main attraction of the book will be the translations of Fan Chengda's poetry, which make up almost half of the text, and includes poems on such familiar themes as the Chinese countryside, peasant life, Buddhism, and growing old. The more technical part of the book contains a biography of the poet, a discussion of his affiliation with poets of the generation before him, a detailed analysis of his style,...

This study examines law enforcement within the context of Sung society. Professor McKnight shows that the group of criminals who were the core of the habitual criminal group in Sung China were young unattached males with few lifeskills. What became of the criminal after capture and conviction is also an important aspect of this study, which addresses basic questions in Chinese punishment. This work is the first comprehensive study of law enforcement in traditional China. The depth and rigour to which the subject is treated would make it most appropriate for scholars in legal history and East...

Tun-huang Popular Narratives presents authoritative translations of four vernacular Chinese stories, taken from fragmentary texts usually referred to as pien-wen or 'transformation texts'. Dating from the late T'ang (618 907) and Five Dynasties (907 959) periods, the texts were discovered early last century in a cave at Tun-huang, in Chinese Central Asia. However, written down in an early colloquial language by semi-literate individuals and posing formidable philological problems, the texts have not been studied critically before. Nevertheless they represent the only surviving primary...

This is the first comprehensive study in a Western language of Liu Tsung-yUan, one of the finest prose stylists China has ever produced. Liu was not only a leading writer of T'ang China (618-906) but also an important thinker of his time. Examining every major aspect of his life and thought, the book also discusses the relationship of his thought to mid-T'ang intellectual changes and offers a new interpretation of the origins of a key intellectual watershed, the rise of Neo-Confucianism in the eleventh century.

Tu Fu is considered the greatest poet of the Chinese tradition. In the epochal An Lu-shan rebellion, he alone of his contemporaries consistently recorded in poetry the great events and pervasive sufferings of the time. For a millennium now, Tu Fu's poetry has been accepted as epitomizing the Chinese moral conscience at its highest, and as such, his work has been placed almost beyond the reach of criticism. In Reconsidering Tu Fu, Eva Shan Chou defuses these formidable problems by examining Tu Fu both as a cultural monument and a poet. She investigates the evolution of his stature as an icon...