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Record of Daily Knowledge and Collected Poems and Essays: Selections
Contributor(s): Gu, Yanwu (Author), Johnston, Ian (Translator)
ISBN: 0231170483     ISBN-13: 9780231170482
Publisher: Columbia University Press
OUR PRICE:   $74.25  
Product Type: Hardcover
Published: November 2016
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Collections | Asian - General
- Religion | Confucianism
- History | Asia - China
Dewey: 895.184
LCCN: 2016003673
Series: Translations from the Asian Classics
Physical Information: 1.2" H x 6.1" W x 9" (1.25 lbs) 352 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - Chinese
- Cultural Region - Asian
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
Gu Yanwu pioneered the late-Ming and early Qing-era practice of Han Learning, or Evidential Learning, favoring practical over theoretical approaches to knowledge. He strongly encouraged scholars to return to the simple, ethical precepts of early Confucianism, and in his best-known work, Rizhi lu (Record of Daily Knowledge), he applied this paradigm to literature, government, economics, history, education, and philology. This volume includes translations of selected essays from Rizhi lu and Gu Yanwu's Shiwen Ji (Collected Poems and Essays), along with an introduction explaining the personal and political dimensions of the scholar's work.

Gu Yanwu wrote the essays and poems featured in this volume while traveling across China during the decades immediately after the fall of the Ming Dynasty. They merge personal observation with rich articulations of Confucian principles and are, as Gu said, "not old coin but copper dug from the hills." Like many of his contemporaries, Gu Yanwu believed the Ming Dynasty had suffered from an overconcentration of power in its central government and recommended decentralizing authority while strengthening provincial self-government. In his introduction, Ian Johnston recounts Gu Yanwu's personal history and reviews his published works, along with their scholarly reception. Annotations accompany his translations, and a special essay on feudalism by Tang Dynasty poet and scholar Liu Zongyuan (773-819) provides insight into Gu Yanwu's later work on the subject.