Description
Book SynopsisThe scholarly culture of Ming dynasty China is often seen as prioritizing philosophy over concrete textual study. Nathan Vedal uncovers the preoccupation among Ming thinkers with specialized linguistic learning, a field typically associated with the intellectual revolution of the eighteenth century.
Trade ReviewThis brilliant, important book successfully reinstates the centrality of philology to late imperial Chinese intellectual culture. By liberating philology from the narrowly defined discipline of linguistics, Vedal powerfully unfolds how the historical understanding of the study of language is pivotal in the reconsideration of the boundaries of knowledge, intellectual change from the Ming to the Qing, and ways of forming intellectual communities. -- Suyoung Son, author of
Writing for Print: Publishing and the Making of Textual Authority in Late Imperial ChinaRequired reading on the historiography of language and writing in China. With clarity, insight, and impressive erudition, Vedal weaves together material from fields including philosophy, poetry, music, lexicography, religion, and mathematics, showing the richness and sophistication of Ming philology and its persistence through the Qing and down to the present. -- David Lurie, author of
Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of WritingThis important study recovers a long-ignored domain of vibrant intellectual activity that was long thought to be nonexistent or, worse, uninteresting. Vedal shows that scholars in the Ming were deeply engaged in the creative study of language and devised novel ways of understanding it. A significant contribution to Chinese intellectual history. -- Bruce Rusk, cotranslator of
The Book of Swindles Selections from a Late Ming CollectionGrand in scope and ambition,
The Culture of Language in Ming China presents new and boldly interdisciplinary research. Connecting phonology to music, Chinese to Sanskrit, classical scholars to opera librettists, and Confucians to Buddhists, it will become a must-read for scholars of late imperial China and beyond. -- Ya Zuo, author of
Shen Gua’s EmpiricismBy examining Ming philology on its own terms rather than through the lens of later critics, Vedal reconstructs its richly comprehensive view of language. His inspiring exploration of linguistic study in relation to script and sound, cosmology, mental discipline, and moral message sheds new light on the learned culture of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century China and invites comparison with other parts of the early modern world. -- Ann Blair, coeditor of
Information: A Historical CompanionA highly interesting and important book, not just for those specializing in late imperial China, but also for outsiders to the field, who are curious about the historical study of language. * Journal of Chinese History *
Vedal’s work illuminates the veiled context of Ming philology and reflects its moral motivation, thus offering another mirror for observing the culture and knowledge of language in China. * The Chinese Historical Review *
A brilliant and stimulating book . . . It should be required reading for anyone who works in early modern China. * China Review International *
On the basis of a large body of still under-studied Chinese philological texts from the 16th and 17th centuries, Vedal documents in impressive detail an important transformation in knowledge production in Chinese philological tradition. * Monumenta Serica *
Vedal makes a point to draw from largely unknown thinkers to produce a more nuanced portrait of Ming intellectual culture, an intellectual culture not dominated by a handful of eminent personalities but populated by a sprawling constellation of scholars. * Asian Studies Review *
Table of ContentsNote on Language
Introduction
Part I. Sound and Script1. The Number of Everything: Music, Cosmology, and the Origins of Language
2. Letters from the West: Sanskrit, Latin, and Phonetic Legibility in Ming China
3. Script, Antiquity, and Mental Training: Metaphysical Inquiry Into the Nondiscursive Potential of Writing
Part II. Singing and Speaking, Reading and Writing4. Opera and the Search for a Universal Language
5. Reading the Classics for Pleasure: Prose as Verse, Verse as Music
Part III. Philology: The Making and Remaking of a Discipline6. Afterlives: Ming Methods and Their Competition in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
7. The Reinvention of Philology: Specialization, Disciplinarity, and Intellectual Lineage
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
