A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography
In this comprehensive study of the rhetoric, narrative patterns, and intellectual content of the Zuozhuan and Guoyu, David Schaberg reads these two collections of historical anecdotes as traces of a historiographical practice that flourished around the fourth century BCE among the followers of Confucius. He contends that the coherent view of early China found in these texts is an effect of their origins and the habits of reading they impose. Rather than being totally accurate accounts, they represent the efforts of a group of officials and ministers to argue for a moralizing interpretation of the events of early Chinese history and for their own value as skilled interpreters of events and advisers to the rulers of the day.
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A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography
In this comprehensive study of the rhetoric, narrative patterns, and intellectual content of the Zuozhuan and Guoyu, David Schaberg reads these two collections of historical anecdotes as traces of a historiographical practice that flourished around the fourth century BCE among the followers of Confucius. He contends that the coherent view of early China found in these texts is an effect of their origins and the habits of reading they impose. Rather than being totally accurate accounts, they represent the efforts of a group of officials and ministers to argue for a moralizing interpretation of the events of early Chinese history and for their own value as skilled interpreters of events and advisers to the rulers of the day.
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A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography

A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography

by David Schaberg
A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography

A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography

by David Schaberg

Hardcover

$50.00 
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Overview

In this comprehensive study of the rhetoric, narrative patterns, and intellectual content of the Zuozhuan and Guoyu, David Schaberg reads these two collections of historical anecdotes as traces of a historiographical practice that flourished around the fourth century BCE among the followers of Confucius. He contends that the coherent view of early China found in these texts is an effect of their origins and the habits of reading they impose. Rather than being totally accurate accounts, they represent the efforts of a group of officials and ministers to argue for a moralizing interpretation of the events of early Chinese history and for their own value as skilled interpreters of events and advisers to the rulers of the day.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780674008618
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication date: 04/15/2002
Series: Harvard East Asian Monographs , #205
Pages: 528
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

David Schaberg is Associate Professor of Chinese at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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