From Tang to Song: Transmissions and Inventions in China's Middle Period, Volume 2
1st Edition
Will be published approx. on 13. November 2026
Book
Hardback
480 pages
978-90-485-7213-7 (ISBN)
Description
This volume investigates social, medical, and religious transformations during China's middle period across the Tang dynasty (618-907), the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (907-960), and the succeeding Song dynasty (960-1279).
Focusing on social history, medicine and medical history, and ritual and religion, the essays demonstrate how disparate the initiating moments and timelines of change were in different social, cultural, or geographic domains. This volume proposes deconstructing distinct processes of change that trace unique temporal arcs, allowing for new hypotheses regarding causal relations. This approach reveals that many perceived "transmissions" from Tang through Song are better understood as retrospective tenth-century or Song "inventions." The contributing scholars represent many spheres of the field and span several scholarly generations, deploying methodological approaches that encompass cross-genre examinations of canonical and less-studied sources alongside digital humanities techniques.
Accessible to scholars and students of middle period China at all levels, this volume introduces readers to key figures, texts, and debates from Tang to Song while proposing new frameworks and raising important new questions for multiple fields.
Focusing on social history, medicine and medical history, and ritual and religion, the essays demonstrate how disparate the initiating moments and timelines of change were in different social, cultural, or geographic domains. This volume proposes deconstructing distinct processes of change that trace unique temporal arcs, allowing for new hypotheses regarding causal relations. This approach reveals that many perceived "transmissions" from Tang through Song are better understood as retrospective tenth-century or Song "inventions." The contributing scholars represent many spheres of the field and span several scholarly generations, deploying methodological approaches that encompass cross-genre examinations of canonical and less-studied sources alongside digital humanities techniques.
Accessible to scholars and students of middle period China at all levels, this volume introduces readers to key figures, texts, and debates from Tang to Song while proposing new frameworks and raising important new questions for multiple fields.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Academic
Illustrations
9 s/w Tabellen, 8 s/w Zeichnungen, 3 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder, 11 s/w Abbildungen
9 Tables, black and white; 8 Line drawings, black and white; 3 Halftones, black and white; 11 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-90-485-7213-7 (9789048572137)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Robert Hymes is Carpentier Professor of Chinese history at Columbia University. His work has focused on the social and cultural history of middle period China, studying elite culture, family and kinship, religion, and medicine among other topics. He is currently pursuing two projects, on the East Asian origins of the Black Death and on the problem of "belief" in the middle period. His monographs Statesmen and Gentlemen (1986) and Way and Byway (2002) won the Joseph Levenson Prize of the Association for Asian Studies.
Anna M. Shields is Gordon Wu '58 Professor of Chinese Studies at Princeton University, and her work focuses on Tang, tenth century, and Song literature and literary history. Recent publications include the co-edited volume Religion and Literature in Medieval China: The Way and the Words (with Gil Raz, 2023), and "Avatars of Li Bai: Producing Tang Poets in the Northern Song Dynasty," forthcoming in Imperial Authority and Cultures of Learning in Byzantium and Tang and Song China.
Anna M. Shields is Gordon Wu '58 Professor of Chinese Studies at Princeton University, and her work focuses on Tang, tenth century, and Song literature and literary history. Recent publications include the co-edited volume Religion and Literature in Medieval China: The Way and the Words (with Gil Raz, 2023), and "Avatars of Li Bai: Producing Tang Poets in the Northern Song Dynasty," forthcoming in Imperial Authority and Cultures of Learning in Byzantium and Tang and Song China.
Content
Introduction Part 1: Social History 1. The Doubling of the Population between the Tang and the Song: History and Historiography 2. Articulations of Elite Identity During the Tang Dynasty 3. From 'Aristocracy' to 'Meritocracy': A Lexicometric Analysis of Discourse Change across the Tang-Song Transition 4. Women's Associations in Medieval China, Fifth to Tenth Centuries 5. Changing Practices of Patronage, Late Tang to Song Part 2: Medical History 6. Genre and Medicine in the Tang-Song Transition: Toward a Medical Poetics 7. The Place of Ritual Therapeutics in Medical Governance: From Tang to Song Huizong Part 3: Ritual and Religion 8. Reassessing the Baolin zhuan ??? and its Place in Tang, Five Dynasties & Ten Kingdoms, and Song Chan Buddhism 9. Deities, the People, and Political and Social Order: Rain-Prayer Writing (Qiyu wen ???) in Tang and Song China 10. A Common Framework for Sacrifices: Li Longqian, Ox Heart Hill, and the State from the Tang to the Song 11. On the Term "Ritual Master" (fashi ??) As a Source of Perplexity 12. Interiorization in Song Daoist Ritual 13. Deviation from the Tang Models: The Making of the Song Divine Ancestor