The arts of governance : Sinitic political advice literature from medieval times to the present / Hilde De Weerdt

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

De Weerdt, Hilde Godelieve Dominique, author.

Series:

Perspectives on the global past

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tang Taizong, Emperor of China, 597-649--Influence.

Tang Taizong.

Chinese literature--Tang dynasty, 618-907--History and criticism.

Chinese literature.

Chinese literature--Tang dynasty, 618-907--Political aspects.

Political science literature--China--Influence.

Political science literature.

Politics and literature--China--History.

Politics and literature.

Political science--Philosophy--History.

Political science.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Other Title:

Sinitic political advice literature from medieval times to the present

Place of Publication:

Honolulu : University of Hawai'i Press, [2025]

Summary:

"The Arts of Governance offers a global history of the creation, uses, and adaptations of the political advice literature produced at the court of or about the reign of Tang Emperor Taizong (r. 626–649). This book is the first to place the history of Sinitic mirror texts in a global and comparative historical framework. De Weerdt interprets medieval political advice literature as an administrative technology attested throughout Afro-Eurasia whose history is shown to have been cross-cultural from inception through the present. The five chapters explain key moments in the longue-durée global history of the Taizong mirror literature and do so by describing their global and comparative contexts as well as by probing the specific models of governance and the political agendas that were at play during each of these moments. The first chapter documents the use of political metaphors of the body and the mirror in Sinitic political advice literature and explains the early medieval construction of “the arts of governance” as a model through these metaphors. Subsequent chapters show how later medieval Neo-Confucian politicians developed the “learning of emperors” as a model to respond to the early fourteenth-century Mongol infatuation with the Taizong mirror literature, and ask why the Tang mirror texts, after having been long overshadowed by Neo-Confucian alternatives, were adapted in various genres and different media at early modern East Asian and West European courts and broadly circulated in print. The fifth and final chapter delves into the remarkable phenomenon of the explosion of vernacular East Asian translations of these mirror texts (over forty unique modern Chinese translations) from the late twentieth century to the present. The Arts of Governance vividly depicts the continuities and transitions in the longue-durée history of East Asian mirror literature, and challenges temporal and spatial divides such as medieval arts of governance/modern political theory and Euro-Mediterranean mirror literature/East Asian classics and commentary. It also invites readers to rethink the chronologies and modalities of vernacularization and the global exchange of administrative knowledge and technologies"-- De Gruyter Brill

Contents:

The arts of governance

The learning of emperors

The comparison of monarchies : political theory and state fiction

The comparison of monarchies : reform and etiquette

Nations of leaders

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Online resource; title from PDF title page (De Gruyter Brill, viewed July 17, 2026)

Other Format:

Print version: Weerdt, Hilde De Arts of governance

ISBN:

9798880702985

9798880702992

OCLC:

1592787714

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license