University of California Press
Classicism, Politics, and Kinship: The Ch'ang-Chou School of New Text Confucianism in Late Imperial China
Key Metrics
- Benjamin A Elman
- University of California Press
- Hardcover
- 9780520066731
- -
- -
- Religion > Confucianism
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
New Text scholars, although not revolutionary, stood for new forms of belief, and they challenged the authenticity of classical sources upon which much orthodox political discourse had been based. Their notions of historical change proved to be important stepping stones toward an influential New Text vision of social and political transformation that climaxed in the 1898 reform movement.
Elman examines the conflicting New Text versus Old Text portraits of Confucius in order to gain a more precise grasp of classical studies in imperial China as the ideological source for the constitutionality of the Confucian imperium. Central to his argument is the discovery that kinship organizations in pre-modern China played an important role in fostering schools of learning such as the Ch'ang-chou New Text school. Accordingly, this study affords us a unique perspective on how gentry sought to impose their agenda on the state in an effort to weather the great changes occurring during the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties.
Author Bio
Benjamin Elman (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, 1980) is Professor of East Asian Studies and History with his primary department in East Asian Studies.
His teaching and research fields include:
1) Chinese intellectual and cultural history, 1000-1900;
2) history of science in China, 1600-1930;
3) history of education in late imperial China;
4) Sino-Japanese cultural history, 1600-1850.
His publications include:
From Philosophy To Philology (1984, 1990, 2001);
Classicism, Politics, and Kinship (1990);
A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (2000).
He has recently completed two book projects: On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550-1900 (2005), and A Cultural History of Modern Science in Late Imperial China (2006).
A new work entitled Meritocracy and Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (HUP) appeared in Fall 2013.
I also edited several volumes from conferences held at Princeton under the auspices of PIIRS, EAP, and the Mellon Foundation on "Science in Republican China" (Brill 2014), "Languages, Literacies, and Vernaculars in Early Modern East Asia" (Brill 2015), and "Medical Classics and Medical Philology in East Asian, 1400-1900" (Brill 2016).
During my leave, I visited archives in China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.
For my leave in AY17, I have continued working on a new project entitled "The Intellectual Impact of Late Imperial Chinese Classicism, Medicine, and Science in Tokugawa Japan, 1700-1850," under the auspices of summer research grants from my Mellon Foundation Career Service Award (2011-2017).
Source: Princeton University Department of East Asian Studies
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