Public memory in early China / K. E. Brashier.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brashier, K. E., 1965- author.

Series:

Harvard-Yenching Institute monograph series ; 91.

Harvard-Yenching Institute Monographs ; 91

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Memorials--Chinese--History--To 1500.

Memorials.

Funeral rites and ceremonies--China--History--To 1500.

Funeral rites and ceremonies.

Burial--China--History--To 1500.

Burial.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 511 pages :) illustrations ;

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London : Harvard University Asia Center, [2014]

Summary:

In early imperial China, the dead were remembered by stereotyping them, by relating them to the existing public memory and not by vaunting what made each person individually distinct and extraordinary in his or her lifetime. Their posthumous names were chosen from a limited predetermined pool; their descriptors were derived from set phrases in the classical tradition; and their identities were explicitly categorized as being like this cultural hero or that sage official in antiquity. In other words, postmortem remembrance was a process of pouring new ancestors into prefabricated molds or stamping them with rigid cookie cutters. Public Memory in Early China is an examination of this pouring and stamping process. After surveying ways in which learning in the early imperial period relied upon memorization and recitation, K. E. Brashier treats three definitive parameters of identity--name, age, and kinship--as ways of negotiating a person's relative position within the collective consciousness. He then examines both the tangible and intangible media responsible for keeping that defined identity welded into the infrastructure of Han public memory.

Contents:

Introduction : han memorial culture

"Repeated inking" and the backdrop of a manuscript culture

"Continuous chanting" and the backdrop of an oral performance culture

Inking and chanting share their secret of longevity

The ancestor's given names as locative markers

The ancestor's surname as a spatial marker

Following the named lineage back through time

The age of childhood

The age of adulthood

The age of advanced years

The age of death

The age of afterlife

Weakening personal agency

Strengthening interpersonal bonds

A dynamic relationship net

Calling cards and the trafficking of names

The ancestral shrine and its tools of remembrance

The cemetery and its tools of remembrance

Commemorative portraiture as a tool of remembrance

Reduction

Conversion

Association.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-68417-075-3

OCLC:

1132226987

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9781684170753 DOI