A History of Chinese Classical Scholarship, Volume II: Qin, Han, Wei, Jin

by David B Honey

Overview

Volume II of David M. Honey’s comprehensive history of Chinese thought covers a vital 500-year stretch in China’s history, from national unification in 221 BCE to the first post-imperial fragmentation into rival northern and southern polities. This volume discusses the reconstitution of the classics after the textual devastation wrought by the policies of the First Emperor of Qin, who destroyed many of them, and their eventual canonization by the crown during the Western Han period. Honey also examines the professionalization of Chinese classical scholarship as a state-sponsored enterprise, whereby private masters gave way to tenured academicians who specialized in single classical works. This volume also covers the development of various subgenres in the discipline of philology by the three great Eastern Han classicists Liu Xiang in textual criticism, Xu Shen in lexicography, and the polymath Zheng Xuan in the exegesis of virtually all the classics. Honey concludes with an examination of Zheng Xuan as the inspiration for other exegetical modes to explain textual complexities following this era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781680539615
Publisher:	Academica Press
Publication date:	08/01/2021
Pages:	394
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

David B. Honey was born in El Paso Texas, but grew up in Southern California. Graduating from UCLA in 1980, he earned his MA (1984) and PhD (1988) degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1987, he has taught classical Chinese and Chinese literature at Brigham Young University where he was honored as the Humanities Professor of Chinese from 2020 through 2022. His major publications reflect variegated research interests. The Rise of the Medieval Hsiung-nu: The Biography of Liu Yuan (1990), Incense at the Altar: Pioneering Sinologists and the Development of Classical Chinese Philology (2001), a work composed in Chinese, Xifang jingxueshi gailun 西方經學史概論 (A Short History of Classical Scholarship in the West) (2012), and The Southern Garden Poetry Society: Literary Culture and Social Memory in Guangdong (2013) all represent these ancillary interests. A Chinese translation of Incense at the Altar is currently in press. Professor Honey’s main research commitment is represented by this publication of the first three volumes of a projected five-volume set titled A History of Chinese Classical Scholarship. Vols. one (2018) and two (2019) have appeared in Chinese translation by Social Sciences Academic Press, Beijing.

Editorial Reviews

David B. Honey is a sinologist who is ‘waiting for the past.’ His five volumes of A History of Chinese Classical Scholarship, which took over a decade to compose, sort out the historical development of the Chinese Classics over the millennia, and fill in a large gap in western sinological circles resulting from the lack of a general history of Chinese classical scholarship. He moves in and out between the two traditions of Chinese and western classical studies, seeking mutual confirmation among the different traditions. He attempts to generate new knowledge by uncovering historical facts, and his openness constantly updates the inheritance of and research methods on the Chinese Classics. His studies of the classics for over twenty years are the result of a reserve of insight, extracting the kindling of revelation from the hidden recesses of abundant traditional sources and modern studies. This forms a special archaeology of knowledge, which penetrates the depths of time. A History of Chinese Classical Scholarship heralds the arrival of the production of iterative knowledge in sinology.

Lin Jiangquan

Brilliant and monumental. It introduces the English reader into the vast and exceedingly rich world of classical Chinese scholarship, which arguably constituted the core intellectual tradition in China for almost three millennia. David B. Honey’s knowledge of the sources, both primary and secondary, and his grasp of the central issues of this long history are quite stunning and establish a gold mine of information that will assuredly be searched and tapped by specialists and other intellectually engaged readers for many decades, if not for centuries, to come.

Stephen W. Durrant

The History of Chinese Classical Scholarship is a uniquely ambitious endeavor. Panoramic in perspective and impressively rich in detail, it judiciously balances traditional views with current, including comparative, approaches. Specialists and general readers alike will find much to explore in David Honey’s account of one of the world’s greatest scholarly traditions.

Martin Kern

Impressive and substantial. I appreciate the scope of this work and the depth of scholarship that has gone into it. Everything is presented clearly and in admirable detail. It is a magnificent work; I look forward to seeing it in print.

William G. Boltz