The first volume of David M. Honey's comprehensive history of Chinese thought offers a close study of Confucius, that tradition's proto-classicist. This opening volume examines Confucius traditions that largely formed the views of later classicists, who regarded him as their profession's patron saint. Honey's survey begins by examining how these views informed the Chinese classicists' own identities as textual critics and interpreters, all dedicated to self-cultivation for government service. It focuses on Confucius's methods as a proto-classical master and teacher, and on the media in which he worked, including the spoken word and written texts. As Honey explains, Confucius's immediate motivations were twofold: the moral development of himself and his disciples and the ritual application of the lessons from the classics. His instruction occurred in ritualized settings in the form of a question and answer catechism between master and disciples. This pedagogical approach will be analyzed through the interpretive paradigm of "performative ritual," borrowed from recent studies of Greek classical drama. The volume concludes with a detailed treatment of a trio of Confucius's disciples who were most prominent in transmitting his teachings, and with chapters on his intellectual inheritors, Mencius and Xunzi.

This ook redefines the bureaucracy of Ancient Chinese society during the Western Zhou period. The analysis is based on inscriptions of royal edicts from the period carved into bronze vessels. The inscriptions clarify the political and social construction of the Western Zhou and the ways in which it exercised its authority.

Examines the original composition of China's oldest books, the Classic of Changes, the Venerated Documents, and the Classic of Poetry, and attempts to restore their original meanings.

Zhou History Unearthed offers both a novel understanding of early Chinese historiography and a fully annotated translation of Xinian (String of Years), the most notable historical manuscript from the state of Chu. Yuri Pines details the importance of Xinian and other recently discovered texts for our understanding of history writing in Zhou China.

The Homeric epics and the Book of Songs are not just the fountainheads of the Western and Chinese literary traditions; for centuries they played a central role in education and communal life, and thus exercised a lasting influence on both civilizations. This volume presents the first systematic comparison of the two corpora. Part One analyzes their genesis and their reception, while Part Two discusses their characteristics as poetic creations. The book brings together Chinese and Western sinologists and classicists, and so promotes significant interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue. Though the contributors rank among the leading experts in their fields, the essays here are accessible not only to their peers, but also to the interested ‘general reader’, and so to all those who seek a deeper understanding of Chinese and Western civilizations, their common human basis and their characteristic differences.

In search of perfect clarity / Marcia Reed and Paola Demattè -- A perfume is best from afar : publishing China for Europe / Marcia Reed -- Christ and Confucius : accommodating Christian and Chinese beliefs / Paola Demattè -- From astronomy to heaven : Jesuit science and the conversion of China / Paola Demattè -- Mapping an acentric world : Ferdinand Verbiest's Kunyu quantu / Gang Song and Paola Demattè -- War and peace : four intercultural landscapes / Richard E. Strassberg.