Free Delivery Over $100
|
|
|||
|
||||
OverviewHow the medieval study of ancient bronzes influenced the production of knowledge and the making of things in East Asia. This book opens in eleventh-century China, where scholars were the first in world history to systematically illustrate and document ancient artifacts. As Jeffrey Moser argues, the visual, technical, and conceptual mechanisms they developed to record these objects laid the foundations for methods of visualizing knowledge that scholars throughout early modern East Asia would use to make sense of the world around them. Of the artifacts these scholars studied, the most celebrated were bronze ritual vessels that had been cast nearly two thousand years earlier. While working to make sense of the relationship between the bronzes’ complex shapes and their inscribed glyphs, they came to realize that the objects were “nominal things”—objects inscribed with names that identified their own categories and uses. Eleventh-century scholars knew the meaning of these glyphs from hallowed Confucian writings that had been passed down through centuries, but they found shocking disconnects between the names and the bronzes on which they were inscribed. Nominal Things traces the process by which a distinctive system of empiricism was nurtured by discrepancies between the complex materiality of the bronzes and their inscriptions. By revealing the connections between the new empiricism and older ways of knowing, the book explains how scholars refashioned the words of the Confucian classics into material reality. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Jeffrey MoserPublisher: The University of Chicago Press Imprint: University of Chicago Press Edition: 1 Dimensions: Width: 17.80cm , Height: 2.80cm , Length: 25.40cm ISBN: 9780226822464ISBN 10: 022682246 Pages: 336 Publication Date: 20 April 2023 Audience: Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In stock  We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately. Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Conundrum of the Chalice Making Facture Sensible A Tale of Three Modes On the Matter of Antiquarianism Part I. The Lexical Picture 1. Names as Implements Nature as Convention The Revelation of Writing 2. Picturing Names The Complexity of Yellow The Art of Restoration The Hermeneutics of Picturing Monumental Designs Part II. The Empirical Impression 3. The Style of Antiquity Empty Seats and Wandering Ways Trunks and Branches Past as Present The Fragility of Stone The Failure of Confucius 4. Agents of Change Erasure and Its Discontents The Pacification of Huaixi Recarving a Stele The Reassuring Trace The Indexical Hermeneutic Bronzes as Indexical Things 5: Nominal Empiricism Conversing with Things The Sparrow in the Cup How the Bell Tolls Part III. The Schematic Thing 6: Substance into Schema Two into One The Novelty of Antiquity Bronzes as Schemata 7: Nominal Casting Facture after Failure Conclusion Acknowledgments Chinese Texts Glossary Notes Works Cited IndexReviewsNominal Things is a groundbreaking philosophical study of medieval Chinese ritual vessels. It makes clear why such objects were of central cultural importance at the time and why their history should be anything but marginalized in contemporary literary and visual theory. Questioning the value of Western art historical concepts such as representation, Moser devises a new theoretical framework that follows the medieval Confucian discourse on illustrated lexicographic texts and the interpretation of classical bronzes. -- Francois Louis, Bard Graduate Center This is an elegantly argued, well-written, and quite brilliant book. Moser marshals the full panoply of advanced critical methods in the contemporary humanities while engaging with a significant phenomenon in Chinese history: the revival of interest in antiquity during the Song period. Nominal Things is unquestionably a remarkable achievement. -- Lothar von Falkenhausen, University of California, Los Angeles Author InformationJeffrey Moser is assistant professor of history of art and architecture at Brown University. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
||||
