Confucian Image Politics: Masculine Morality in Seventeenth-Century China - Hardcover

Zhang, Ying

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0295998539 ISBN 13: 9780295998534

Publisher: University of Washington Press, 2016

Synopsis

During the Ming-Qing transition (roughly from the 1570s to the 1680s), literati-officials in China employed public forms of writing, art, and social spectacle to present positive moral images of themselves and negative images of their rivals. The rise of print culture, the dynastic change, and the proliferating approaches to Confucian moral cultivation together gave shape to this new political culture. Confucian Image Politics considers the moral images of officials―as fathers, sons, husbands, and friends―circulated in a variety of media inside and outside the court. It shows how power negotiations took place through participants’ invocations of Confucian ethical ideals in political attacks, self-expression, self-defense, discussion of politically sensitive issues, and literati community rebuilding after the dynastic change. This first book-length study of early modern Chinese politics from the perspective of critical men’s history shows how images―the Donglin official, the Fushe scholar, the turncoat figure―were created, circulated, and contested to serve political purposes.

The open access publication of this book was made possible by a grant from the James P. Geiss and Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation.

About this title

About the Author

Ying Zhang is associate professor of pre-modern Chinese history at Ohio State University. She received her PhD in history and women’s studies from the University of Michigan in 2010. This is her first book.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0295998539
• ISBN 13: 9780295998534
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 328