University of Hawai'i Press
The Magnitude of Ming
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About this book
Few ideas in Chinese discourse are as ubiquitous as ming, variously understood as “command,” “allotted lifespan,” “fate,” or “life.” In the earliest days of Chinese writing, ming was already present, invoked in divinations and etched into ancient bronzes; it has continued to inscribe itself down to the twenty-first century in literature and film. This volume assembles twelve essays by some of the most eminent scholars currently working in Chinese studies to produce the first comprehensive study in English of ming’s broad web of meanings. The essays span the history of Chinese civilization and represent disciplines as varied as religion, philosophy, anthropology, literary studies, history, and sociology. Cross-cultural comparisons between ancient Chinese views of ming and Western conceptions of moira and fatum are discussed, providing a specific point of departure for contrasting the structure of attitudes between the two civilizations.
Ming is central to debates on the legitimacy of rulership and is the crucial variable in Daoist manuals for prolonging one’s life. It has preoccupied the philosopher and the poet and weighed on the minds of commoners throughout imperial China. Ming was the subject of the great critic Jin Shengtan’s last major literary work and drove the narrative of such classic novels as The Investiture of the Gods and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Confucius, Mencius, and most other great thinkers of the classical age, as well as those in ages to come, had much to say on the subject. It has only been eschewed in contemporary Chinese philosophy, but even its effacement there has ironically turned it into a sort of absent cause.
Contributors: Stephen Bokenkamp, Zong-qi Cai, Robert Campany, Woei Lien Chong, Deirdre Sabina Knight, Christopher Lupke, Mu-chou Poo, Michael Puett, Lisa Raphals, P. Steven Sangren, David Schaberg, Patricia Sieber.
Topics
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Frontmatter
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Contents
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PREFACE
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Diverse Modes of Ming
1 - Part I. The Foundations of Fate
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1. Command and the Content of Tradition
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2. Following the Commands of Heaven: The Notion of Ming in Early China
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3. Languages of Fate: Semantic Fields in Chinese and Greek
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4. How to Steer through Life: Negotiating Fate in the Daybook
107 - Part II. Escape Attempts from Finitude
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5. Living off the Books: Fifty Ways to Dodge Ming in Early Medieval China
129 -
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6. Simple Twists of Fate
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7. Multiple Vistas of Ming and Changing Visions of Life in the Works of Tao Qian
169 - Part III. Reversals of Fortune and Reversals of Reality The Literary Career of Ming in Late Imperial Fiction and Drama
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8. Turning Lethal Slander into Generative Instruction
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9. Fate and Transcendence in the Rhetoric of Myth and Ritual
225 - Part IV. Determinism's Progress Voluntarism, Gender, and the Fate of the Nation in Modern China
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10. Hubris in Chinese Thought: A Theme in Post-Mao Cultural Criticism
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11. Gendered Fate
272 -
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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
331 -
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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
364 -
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INDEX
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