The Letter To Ren An And Sima Qians Legacy

Download or read book The Letter to Ren An and Sima Qian’s Legacy written by Stephen Durrant and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sima Qian (first century BCE), the author of Record of the Historian (Shiji), is China’s earliest and best-known historian, and his “Letter to Ren An” is the most famous letter in Chinese history. In the letter, Sima Qian explains his decision to finish his life’s work, the first comprehensive history of China, instead of honorably committing suicide following his castration for “deceiving the emperor.” In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, some scholars have queried the authenticity of the letter. Is it a genuine piece of writing by Sima Qian or an early work of literary impersonation? The Letter to Ren An and Sima Qian’s Legacy provides a full translation of the letter and uses different methods to explore issues in textual history. It also shows how ideas about friendship, loyalty, factionalism, and authorship encoded in the letter have far-reaching implications for the study of China.

Download or read book Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo written by Grant Hardy and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1999-07-06 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sima Qian (c. 100 B.C.E.) was China's first historian—he was known as Grand Astrologer at the court of Emperor Wu during the Han dynasty—and, along with Confucius and the First Emperor of Qin, was one of the creators of imperial China. His Shiji (published for Columbia in a translation by Burton Watson as Records of the Grand Historian) not only became the model for the twenty-six Standard Histories that the historians of each Chinese dynasty wrote to legitimize the dynastic succession, but also has been an enormously influential resource to historians, literary scholars, philosophers, and many others seeking an understanding of early Chinese history. In Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo, Grant Hardy presents convincing evidence that the Shiji is quite unlike such Western counterparts as the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, for, Hardy argues, Sima Qian's work seeks not only to represent but to influence the world in a manner based on Confucian concepts of sageliness and "the rectification of names." Although many scholars have sought close parallels between Sima Qian and the Greek historians—either criticizing Sima's work, as if Western models of historical interpretation could serve as a template by which to read it, or overemphasizing his "objectivity" to more closely align his text with these "respectable" Greek models—Hardy boldly contends that the Chinese historian never intended to produce a consistent, closed interpretation of the past. Instead, Hardy argues, the Shiji is a microcosm in which Sima Qian sought to represent the open-endedness and multivalence of the world around him, revealing and reinforcing the natural order. In mapping out this model of the world, Sima embodies the historian as sage rather than chronicler. Transcending mere accuracy in recording events, such a historian seeks not to present an opinion about what happened in the past, buttressed with rational arguments and pertinent evidence, but to penetrate the outer details of an incident and discover the moral truths it embodies. Thus intuiting the moral significance of events, the sage-historian delineates the Way and offers his readers a chance to become more in tune with the natural order. Illustrating his provocative theses about the Shiji by analyzing Sima Qian's handling of specific historical personages and episodes such as the First Emperor of the Qin, the hereditary house of Confucius, and the conflicts that ended with the founding of the Han dynasty, Hardy both extends and challenges existing interpretations of this crucial yet understudied text and sheds light on its puzzles and incongruities.

Download or read book The First Emperor written by Sima Qian and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-27 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reprint. Originally published: 2007. Reissued 2009.

Download or read book Hawai‘i Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture written by Victor H. Mair and published by Latitude 20. This book was released on 2005-01-31 with total page 764 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hawai‘i Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture is a collection of more than ninety primary sources—all but a few of which were translated specifically for this volume—of cultural significance from the Bronze Age to the turn of the twentieth century. They take into account virtually every aspect of traditional culture, including sources from the non-Sinitic ethnic minorities.

Download or read book Herodotus and Sima Qian: The First Great Historians of Greece and China written by Thomas R. Martin and published by Macmillan Higher Education. This book was released on 2018-11-27 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this accessible volume, Thomas R. Martin compares the writings of Herodotus in ancient Greece with those of Sima Qian in ancient China to demonstrate the hallmarks of early history writing. While these authors lived in different centuries and were not aware of each other’s works, Martin shows the similar struggles that each grappled with in preparing their historical accounts and how their efforts helped invent modern notions of history writing and the job of the historian. The introduction’s cross-cultural analysis includes a biography of each author, illustrating the setting and times in which he worked, as well as a discussion of how each man introduced interpretation and moral judgment into his writing. The accompanying documents include excerpts from Herodotus’ The Histories and Sima Qian’s Shiji, which illustrate their approach to history writing and their understanding of their own cultures. Also featured are maps and illustrations, a chronology, questions to consider, and a selected bibliography.

Download or read book Reading Sima Qian from Han to Song written by Esther S. Klein and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-03-27 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Father of Chinese History, Esther Klein explores the life and work of the great Han dynasty historian Sima Qian as seen by readers from the Han to the Song dynasties. Today Sima Qian is viewed as both a tragic hero and a literary genius. Premodern responses to him were more equivocal: the complex personal emotions he expressed prompted readers to worry about whether his work as a historian was morally or politically acceptable. Klein demonstrates how controversies over the value and meaning of Sima Qian’s work are intimately bound up with larger questions: How should history be written? What role does individual experience and self-expression play within that process? By what standards can the historian’s choices be judged?

Download or read book Doing More Digital Humanities written by Constance Crompton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As digital media, tools, and techniques continue to impact and advance the humanities, Doing More Digital Humanities provides practical information on how to do digital humanities work. This book offers: A comprehensive, practical guide to the digital humanities. Accessible introductions, which in turn provide the grounding for the more advanced chapters within the book. An overview of core competencies, to help research teams, administrators, and allied groups, make informed decisions about suitable collaborators, skills development, and workflow. Guidance for individuals, collaborative teams, and academic managers who support digital humanities researchers. Contextualized case studies, including examples of projects, tools, centres, labs, and research clusters. Resources for starting digital humanities projects, including links to further readings, training materials and exercises, and resources beyond. Additional augmented content that complements the guidance and case studies in Doing Digital Humanities (Routledge, 2016).