Approaching writing as a form of cultural practice and understanding text as an historical object, this book not only recovers elements of the ritual practice of Middle-Period weddings, but also reassesses the relationship between texts and the Middle-Period past. Its fourfold narrative of the writing of weddings and its spirited engagement with the texts--ritual manuals, engagement letters, nuptial songs, calendars and almanacs, and legal texts--offer a form and style for a cultural history that accommodates the particularities of the sources of the Chinese imperial past.

The city of Hangzhou symbolized all of the contradictions of the declining Song Empire (960-1279). It was paramount and feeble, awe-inspiring and threatened, the most admired city and a disgrace to its dynastic founders. Rather than debate the merit of these polemical judgments, the contributors to this volume treat them as expressions of their historical moment, reflecting ideological convictions and aesthetic preferences.

Leading scholars of the field, including Beverly Bossler, Stephen West, and Martin Powers, have produced essays that relate changes in literary convention to shifts in...