Overview

Letter writing is a pivotal yet neglected medium of historical Chinese communication. The epistolary format is key to sinological research. As historical letters have a specific vocabulary and rhetorical structure it is difficult to read them without the supporting apparatus of specialised study. The aim of this compendium is to fill the gap in Chinese studies by providing a bilingual Chinese-English edition of a corpus of Chinese letters, prepared for advanced students of Classical Chinese as well as academics with an interest in historical Chinese epistolary art. The book has a broad and general introduction, systematically constructed vocabulary sections as well as detailed grammatical and philological explanations. It focuses on Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) letter writing, a high point of pre-1911 epistolary activity in Chinese, and will appeal to Chinese scholars and Sinologists at a broad range of academic levels.

Full Product Details

Author:   Daniel Kadar
Publisher:   Continuum Publishing Corporation
Imprint:   Continuum Publishing Corporation
ISBN:  

9781441107718

ISBN 10:   1441107711
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   12 November 2009
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Electronic book text
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Part I: Family Letter Writing; 1: Family Letter Writing I: Letters of Zheng Banqiao; 2: Family Letter Writing II: Letters of Zeng Guofan; Part II: 'Specialized' Epistolary Discourse; 3: 'Specialized' Epistolary Discourse I: Literary Letters of Jin Shengtan; 4: 'Specialized' Epistolary Discourse II: Scholarly Letters of Gu Yanwu; Part III: Non-family 'Social' Letter Writing; 5: Non-Family 'Social' Letters I: Letters of Xu Jiacun; 6: Non-Family 'Social' Letters II: Letters of Gong Weizhai; Part IV: Political Letter Writing; 7: Political Letters: A Long Letter of Yuan Shikai; Postscript: What next?; Appendix I: The Chinese Texts (printed in a punctuated form); Appendix II: Chronological List of Chinese Dynasties; Glossary of Epistolary Expressions, Honorifics and Grammatical Words; Bibliography; Index.

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Author Information

Daniel Z. Kadar is a Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary

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