The Five "Confucian" Classics
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Michael Nylan
Nylan begins by tracing the formation of the Five Classics canon in the pre-Han and Han periods, 206 B.C.–A.D. 220, revising standard views on the topic. She assesses the impact on this canon of the invention of a rival corpus, the Four Books, in the twelfth century. She then analyzes each of the Five Classics, discussing when they were written, how they were transmitted and edited in later periods, and what political, historical, and ethical themes were associated with them through the ages. Finally she deliberates on the intertwined fates of Confucius and the Five Classics over the course of the twentieth century and shows how the contents of the Five Classics are relevant to much newer concerns.
"Nylan has given twenty-first-century scholars and students something their predecessors never had—an expert, comprehensive analysis of texts long accepted as the primary "classics" of Chinese civilization. . . . Nylan's thoughtful, authoritative study greatly advances the post-colonialization and post-Confucianization of our understanding both of these key texts and of our own inheirited interpretive patters and paradigms. Reuqired reading for all serious students of Chinese civilization."—Russell Kirkland, Religious Studies Review
Publication Date: July 15, 2014
2 maps, 5 graphs, 1 diagram + 21 halftones