The rise of Confucian ritualism in late imperial China : ethics, classics, and lineage discourse /

Rapid commercialization, rural unrest, urbanization, religious syncretism, and dynastic decline had created an ideological crisis for Confucian scholars by the 17th century. Rejecting the speculative ideas of Wang Yang-ming, they appropriated Sung Neoconfucian moralism in a quest for a "pure" Confucianism. The new Ch'ing dynasty gave the Sung Ch'eng-Chu school its imprimatur, but by the 1680s an increasingly sophisticated hermeneutics questioned the reliability of nearly all of the Confucian canon. The quest for "original intent" using only authenticated texts would make 18th-century Han studies a high point of Chinese philology. Expanding on the work of Joseph Levenson, Benjamin Elman, and Yu Ying-shih, Chow convincingly shows that the broader agenda of this movement--the recovery of "proper" ritual as the most effective means of social control--had profound consequences for the strengthening of gentry power and lineage groups, the control of women and the family, and popular education. Extensively documented; a rich, complex, well-argued, and important book. Graduate; faculty. C. A. Desnoyers; LaSalle University