Overview

Spanning antiquity until the present, Zhao Lu analyses the eclectic and fictitious representations of Confucius that have been widely celebrated by communities of people throughout history. While mainstream scholarship mostly considers Confucius in terms of his role as a celebrated man of wisdom and as a teacher with a humanistic worldview, Zhao addresses the weirder representations. He considers depictions of Confucius as a prophet, a fortune-teller, a powerful demon hunter, a shrewd villain of 19th century American newspapers, an embodiment of feudal evils in the Cultural Revolution, and as a cute friend. Zhao asks why some groups would risk contradicting the well-accepted image of Confucius with such representations and shows how these illustrations reflect the specific anxieties of these communities. He reveals not only how people across history perceived Confucius in diverse ways, but more importantly how they used Confucius in daily life, ranging from calming their anxiety about the future, to legitimizing a dynasty, stereotyping Chinese people, and even to forging a new sense of history.

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9781350327528

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Reviews

Lu Zhao’s pluralistic understanding of Confucius not only reveals the complexity of Chinese cultural history, but also the popularity of Confucius in various sectors of Chinese society. * Tze-ki Hon, Beijing Normal University, China * Iconoclasm abounds in this survey of representations of Confucius that depart from his familiar role as wise old philosopher. Was he a failed counselor? Or ghostbuster? Or a master of arcana? By showing us the range of non-standard representations of Confucius, Zhao Lu makes us question the standard ones, and how they became standard in the first place. * Paul R. Goldin, Professor of Chinese Thought, University of Pennsylvania, USA *

Author Information

Zhao Lu is Assistant Professor of Global China Studies, New York University Shanghai, China.

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