A History of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture

9200000040469018
history of chinese letters and epistolary culture-antje richter-2015
	Contents
	Acknowledgements
	List of Illustrations
	Abbreviations
	About the Contributors
	Introduction: The Study of Chinese Letters and Epistolary Culture
	Part 1 Material Aspects of Chinese Letter Writing Culture
	Chapter 1 Reconstructing the Postal Relay System of the Han Period
	Chapter 2 Letters as Calligraphy Exemplars: The Long and Eventful Life of Yan Zhenqing’s (709–785) Imperial Commissioner Liu Letter
	Chapter 3 Chinese Decorated Letter Papers
	Chapter 4 Material and Symbolic Economies: Letters and Gifts in Early Medieval China
	Part 2 Contemplating the Genre
	Chapter 5 Letters in the Wen xuan
	Chapter 6 Between Letter and Testament: Letters of Familial Admonition in Han and Six Dynasties China
	Chapter 7 The Space of Separation: The Early Medieval Tradition of Four-Syllable “Presentation and Response” Poetry
	Chapter 8 Letters and Memorials in the Early Third Century: The Case of Cao Zhi
	Chapter 9 Liu Xie’s Institutional Mind: Letters, Administrative Documents, and Political Imagination in Fifth- and Sixth-Century China
	Chapter 10 Bureaucratic Influences on Letters in Middle Period China: Observations from Manuscript Letters and Literati Discourse
	Part 3 Diversity of Content and Style
	Section 1 Informal Letters
	Chapter 11 Private Letter Manuscripts from Early Imperial China
	Chapter 12 Su Shi’s Informal Letters in Literature and Life
	Chapter 13 The Letter as Artifact of Sentiment and Legal Evidence
	Chapter 14 Infinite Variations of Writing and Desire: Love Letters in China and Europe
	Chapter 15 Writing from Revolution’s Debris: Shen Congwen’s Family Letters in the Mao Era
	Section 2 Literary Letters
	Chapter 16 Captured in Words: Functions and Limits of Autobiographical Expression in Early Chinese Epistolary Literature
	Chapter 17 Civil Examinations and Cover Letters in the Mid-Tang: Dugu Yu’s (776–815) “Letter Submitted to Attendant Gentleman Quan of the Ministry of Rites”
	Chapter 18 The Inscription of Emotion in Mid-Tang Collegial Letters
	Chapter 19 Halves and Holes: Collections, Networks, and Epistolary Practices of Chan Monks
	Chapter 20 Letters as Windows on Ming-Qing Women’s Literary Culture
	Chapter 21 Epistolary Networks and Practice in the Early Qing: The Letters Written to Yan Guangmin
	Section 3 Open Letters
	Chapter 22 Aid and Comfort: Lu Zhaolin’s Letters
	Chapter 23 She Association Circulars from Dunhuang
	Chapter 24 Between Writing and Publishing Letters: Publishing a Letter about Book Proprietorship
	Chapter 25 Opinions Going Public: Letters to the Editors in China’s Earliest Modern Newspapers
	Scholarship on Chinese Epistolary Literature and Culture: A Select Bibliography
	Index