Public Memory in Early China.

Intro -- Public Memory in Early China -- Contents -- List of Tables and Figures -- Conventions -- Acknowledgments -- INTRODUCTION: Han memorial culture -- SECTION 1: "Repeated Inking" and the backdrop of a manuscript culture -- SECTION 2: "Continuous Chanting" and the backdrop of an oral performance culture -- SECTION 3: Inking and Chanting share their secret of longevity -- PART I: Names as positioning the self -- SECTION 4: The ancestor's given names as locative markers -- SECTION 5: The ancestor's surname as a spatial marker -- SECTION 6: Following the named lineage back through time -- PART II: Age as positioning the self -- SECTION 7: The age of childhood -- SECTION 8: The age of adulthood -- SECTION 9: The age of advanced years -- SECTION 10: The age of death -- SECTION 11: The age of afterlife -- PART III: Kinship as positioning the self -- SECTION 12: Weakening personal agency -- SECTION 13: Strengthening interpersonal bonds -- SECTION 14: A dynamic relationship net -- PART IV: The tangible tools of positioning the self -- SECTION 15: Calling cards and the trafficking of names -- SECTION 16: The ancestral shrine and its tools of remembrance -- SECTION 17: The cemetery and its tools of remembrance -- SECTION 18: Commemorative portraiture as a tool of remembrance -- PART V: The intangible tools of positioning the self -- SECTION 19: Reduction -- SECTION 20: Conversion -- SECTION 21: Association -- Conclusion: "Here is where the Earl of Shao rested" -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- HARVARD-YENCHING INSTITUTE MONOGRAPH SERIES.

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.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.