Writing and Literacy in Early China

Writing and Literacy in Early China

Author: Feng Li

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2012-05-01

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 0295804505

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The emergence and spread of literacy in ancient human society an important topic for all who study the ancient world, and the development of written Chinese is of particular interest, as modern Chinese orthography preserves logographic principles shared by its most ancient forms, making it unique among all present-day writing systems. In the past three decades, the discovery of previously unknown texts dating to the third century BCE and earlier, as well as older versions of known texts, has revolutionized the study of early Chinese writing. The long-term continuity and stability of the Chinese written language allow for this detailed study of the role literacy played in early civilization. The contributors to Writing and Literacy in Early China inquire into modes of manuscript production, the purposes for which texts were produced, and the ways in which they were actually used. By carefully evaluating current evidence and offering groundbreaking new interpretations, the book illuminates the nature of literacy for scribes and readers.


Book Synopsis Writing and Literacy in Early China by : Feng Li

Download or read book Writing and Literacy in Early China written by Feng Li and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The emergence and spread of literacy in ancient human society an important topic for all who study the ancient world, and the development of written Chinese is of particular interest, as modern Chinese orthography preserves logographic principles shared by its most ancient forms, making it unique among all present-day writing systems. In the past three decades, the discovery of previously unknown texts dating to the third century BCE and earlier, as well as older versions of known texts, has revolutionized the study of early Chinese writing. The long-term continuity and stability of the Chinese written language allow for this detailed study of the role literacy played in early civilization. The contributors to Writing and Literacy in Early China inquire into modes of manuscript production, the purposes for which texts were produced, and the ways in which they were actually used. By carefully evaluating current evidence and offering groundbreaking new interpretations, the book illuminates the nature of literacy for scribes and readers.

Writing and Materiality in China

Writing and Materiality in China

Author: Judith T. Zeitlin

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-10-26

Total Pages: 662

ISBN-13: 1684170427

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Speaking about Chinese writing entails thinking about how writing speaks through various media. In the guises of the written character and its imprints, traces, or ruins, writing is more than textuality. The goal of this volume is to consider the relationship of writing to materiality in China’s literary history and to ponder the physical aspects of the production and circulation of writing. To speak of the thing-ness of writing is to understand it as a thing in constant motion, transported from one place or time to another, one genre or medium to another, one person or public to another. Thinking about writing as the material product of a culture shifts the emphasis from the author as the creator and ultimate arbiter of a text’s meaning to the editors, publishers, collectors, and readers through whose hands a text is reshaped, disseminated, and given new meanings. By yoking writing and materiality, the contributors to this volume aim to bypass the tendency to oppose form and content, words and things, documents and artifacts, to rethink key issues in the interpretation of Chinese literary and visual culture.


Book Synopsis Writing and Materiality in China by : Judith T. Zeitlin

Download or read book Writing and Materiality in China written by Judith T. Zeitlin and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speaking about Chinese writing entails thinking about how writing speaks through various media. In the guises of the written character and its imprints, traces, or ruins, writing is more than textuality. The goal of this volume is to consider the relationship of writing to materiality in China’s literary history and to ponder the physical aspects of the production and circulation of writing. To speak of the thing-ness of writing is to understand it as a thing in constant motion, transported from one place or time to another, one genre or medium to another, one person or public to another. Thinking about writing as the material product of a culture shifts the emphasis from the author as the creator and ultimate arbiter of a text’s meaning to the editors, publishers, collectors, and readers through whose hands a text is reshaped, disseminated, and given new meanings. By yoking writing and materiality, the contributors to this volume aim to bypass the tendency to oppose form and content, words and things, documents and artifacts, to rethink key issues in the interpretation of Chinese literary and visual culture.

Mandarin Chinese Language Composition Notebook

Mandarin Chinese Language Composition Notebook

Author: Tuttle Publishing

Publisher:

Published: 2020-08-25

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 9780804853255

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This beautiful notebook makes studying a pleasure! Each double page spread has squared paper on the right-hand side for practicing formation of the Chinese characters, and lined paper on the left-hand side for note-taking. A ten-page reference section at the back of the notebook gives Mandarin character charts, key vocabulary, and basic grammar tips. Contents: Pages 1-118 Alternate pages of lined and squared paper for note-taking and handwriting practice Pages 119-120 Chinese Character charts Pages 121-124 Key vocabulary lists Pages 125-128 Basic grammar tips


Book Synopsis Mandarin Chinese Language Composition Notebook by : Tuttle Publishing

Download or read book Mandarin Chinese Language Composition Notebook written by Tuttle Publishing and published by . This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This beautiful notebook makes studying a pleasure! Each double page spread has squared paper on the right-hand side for practicing formation of the Chinese characters, and lined paper on the left-hand side for note-taking. A ten-page reference section at the back of the notebook gives Mandarin character charts, key vocabulary, and basic grammar tips. Contents: Pages 1-118 Alternate pages of lined and squared paper for note-taking and handwriting practice Pages 119-120 Chinese Character charts Pages 121-124 Key vocabulary lists Pages 125-128 Basic grammar tips

Writing and Authority in Early China

Writing and Authority in Early China

Author: Mark Edward Lewis

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1999-01-01

Total Pages: 558

ISBN-13: 9780791441138

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This book traces the evolving uses of writing to command assent and obedience in early China, an evolution that culminated in the establishment of a textual canon as the foundation of imperial authority. Its central theme is the emergence of this body of writings as the textual double of the state, and of the text-based sage as the double of the ruler. The book examines the full range of writings employed in early China, such as divinatory records, written communications with ancestors, government documents, the collective writings of philosophical and textual traditions, speeches attributed to historical figures, chronicles, verse anthologies, commentaries, and encyclopedic compendia. Lewis shows how these writings served to administer populations, control officials, form new social groups, invent new models of authority, and create an artificial language whose master generated power and whose graphs became potent objects.


Book Synopsis Writing and Authority in Early China by : Mark Edward Lewis

Download or read book Writing and Authority in Early China written by Mark Edward Lewis and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the evolving uses of writing to command assent and obedience in early China, an evolution that culminated in the establishment of a textual canon as the foundation of imperial authority. Its central theme is the emergence of this body of writings as the textual double of the state, and of the text-based sage as the double of the ruler. The book examines the full range of writings employed in early China, such as divinatory records, written communications with ancestors, government documents, the collective writings of philosophical and textual traditions, speeches attributed to historical figures, chronicles, verse anthologies, commentaries, and encyclopedic compendia. Lewis shows how these writings served to administer populations, control officials, form new social groups, invent new models of authority, and create an artificial language whose master generated power and whose graphs became potent objects.

Women and Writing in Modern China

Women and Writing in Modern China

Author: Wendy Larson

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 0804731292

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Using a theoretical approach that utilizes work in literary studies, anthropology, feminist theory, and cultural studies, this book investigates how, in twentieth century China, the modern concepts of the new woman and the new writing developed into a protracted cultural debate over what and how women should and could write.


Book Synopsis Women and Writing in Modern China by : Wendy Larson

Download or read book Women and Writing in Modern China written by Wendy Larson and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using a theoretical approach that utilizes work in literary studies, anthropology, feminist theory, and cultural studies, this book investigates how, in twentieth century China, the modern concepts of the new woman and the new writing developed into a protracted cultural debate over what and how women should and could write.

Ideographic Modernism

Ideographic Modernism

Author: Christopher Bush

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-02-01

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0199889457

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Ideographic Modernism offers a critical account of the ideograph (Chinese writing as imagined in the West) as a modernist invention. Through analyses of works by Claudel, Pound, Kafka, Benjamin, Segalen, and Valery, among others, Christopher Bush traces the interweaving of Western modernity's ethnographic and technological imaginaries, in which the cultural effects of technological media assumed "Chinese" forms, even as traditional representations of "the Orient" lived on in modernist-era responses to media. The book also makes a methodological argument, demonstrating new ways of recovering the generally overlooked presence of China in the text of Western modernism.


Book Synopsis Ideographic Modernism by : Christopher Bush

Download or read book Ideographic Modernism written by Christopher Bush and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ideographic Modernism offers a critical account of the ideograph (Chinese writing as imagined in the West) as a modernist invention. Through analyses of works by Claudel, Pound, Kafka, Benjamin, Segalen, and Valery, among others, Christopher Bush traces the interweaving of Western modernity's ethnographic and technological imaginaries, in which the cultural effects of technological media assumed "Chinese" forms, even as traditional representations of "the Orient" lived on in modernist-era responses to media. The book also makes a methodological argument, demonstrating new ways of recovering the generally overlooked presence of China in the text of Western modernism.

Sinographies

Sinographies

Author: Eric Hayot

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published:

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 145291348X

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'Sinographies' examines topics like colonialism, literary modernism, translation, anime, and Tibet. As a whole, this volume imagines sinography as a new methodological approach to the study of China, one that clears ground for new kinds of comparative work.


Book Synopsis Sinographies by : Eric Hayot

Download or read book Sinographies written by Eric Hayot and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Sinographies' examines topics like colonialism, literary modernism, translation, anime, and Tibet. As a whole, this volume imagines sinography as a new methodological approach to the study of China, one that clears ground for new kinds of comparative work.

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)

Author: Jing Tsu

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2023-01-17

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0735214735

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PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.


Book Synopsis Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) by : Jing Tsu

Download or read book Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) written by Jing Tsu and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-01-17 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.

China in Ten Words

China in Ten Words

Author: Yu Hua

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2012-08-21

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0307739791

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From one of China’s most acclaimed writers: a unique, intimate look at the Chinese experience over the last several decades. Framed by ten phrases common in the Chinese vernacular, China in Ten Words uses personal stories and astute analysis to reveal as never before the world’s most populous yet oft-misunderstood nation. In "Disparity," for example, Yu Hua illustrates the expanding gaps that separate citizens of the country. In "Copycat," he depicts the escalating trend of piracy and imitation as a creative new form of revolutionary action. And in "Bamboozle," he describes the increasingly brazen practices of trickery, fraud, and chicanery that are, he suggests, becoming a way of life at every level of society. Witty, insightful, and courageous, this is a refreshingly candid vision of the "Chinese miracle" and all of its consequences.


Book Synopsis China in Ten Words by : Yu Hua

Download or read book China in Ten Words written by Yu Hua and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of China’s most acclaimed writers: a unique, intimate look at the Chinese experience over the last several decades. Framed by ten phrases common in the Chinese vernacular, China in Ten Words uses personal stories and astute analysis to reveal as never before the world’s most populous yet oft-misunderstood nation. In "Disparity," for example, Yu Hua illustrates the expanding gaps that separate citizens of the country. In "Copycat," he depicts the escalating trend of piracy and imitation as a creative new form of revolutionary action. And in "Bamboozle," he describes the increasingly brazen practices of trickery, fraud, and chicanery that are, he suggests, becoming a way of life at every level of society. Witty, insightful, and courageous, this is a refreshingly candid vision of the "Chinese miracle" and all of its consequences.

Writing Pirates

Writing Pirates

Author: Yuanfei Wang

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2021-06-23

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 0472038516

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Examines writings on China's oceanic piracy wars of the sixteenth century


Book Synopsis Writing Pirates by : Yuanfei Wang

Download or read book Writing Pirates written by Yuanfei Wang and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2021-06-23 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines writings on China's oceanic piracy wars of the sixteenth century