Oliver Weingarten
Biographic Data
| ID | 702433 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Oliver Weingarten |
| GIVEN NAMES | Oliver |
| FAMILY NAME | Weingarten |
| SIGNATURE | WEINGARTEN O |
| AFFILIATIONS | Czech Academy of Sciences, Oriental Institute |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 13 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Costly Signaling in Ancient Chinese Narratives
Seemingly reckless, wasteful, or self-harming actions depicted in narrative sources are embedded in the philosophical and political discourse of Warring States and early imperial China (around the third to the first century bce). Signaling theory unveils the underlying rationality of many such acts by demonstrating how they allow actors with conflicting interests to pursue their goals while reducing costs compared to alternative scenarios. Ancien…
Documentation and Argument in Early China
Debates around Jixia
The character of the scholarly patronage community of Jixia in the Warring States (480-221 B.C.E.) polity of Qi has been hotly debated. Was it indeed an "academy," as it has been retrospectively dubbed? What kind of activities did resident scholars engage in? What teachings did they propound, what writings did they compose? Following the lead of research by Nathan Sivin and Andrew S. Meyer, the present article does not treat Jixia as an academy p…
Intertextuality and Memory in Early Chinese Writings
This article aims to illustrate the usefulness of analytical approaches to early Chinese writings which center on effects of textual memory. Due to a dearth of contemporaneous descriptions, concrete practices of oral transmission, dictation, performance, and interpretation in Early China largely lie beyond the ken of present-day scholarship. But recurrence of linguistic-stylistic elements testifies to the presence of these elements in an author's…
Milburn, Olivia
A number of texts from ancient China are rarely explored by historians or specialists in intellectual history.Collections of anecdotal or otherwise difficult to classify materials such as Shuoyuan 說苑, Xinxu 新序, and Han shi waizhuan 韓詩外傳 have fared particularly badly, and with the exception of Han shi waizhuan, these works have not been considered worthy of being translated into Western languages so far.Up to now, the Yanzi chunqiu 晏子春秋 (hencefort…
Chunyu Kun
The present article undertakes a comprehensive study of ancient Chinese anecdotal and dialogic sources on Chunyu Kun, who is presented in a variety of roles such as trickster, sophist, envoy, jester, procurer of talent for his ruler, and erudite at the so-called Jixia academy which was allegedly established in the pre-imperial state of Qi. The article outlines how certain motifs and topics were reused and, in the process, reshaped by the narrativ…
The Singing Sage
The present article explores uses of verse in direct speech attributed to Confucius (551-479bce) within works compiled mainly during the Han dynasty (206bce-220ce). Analysing short prose narratives and dialogues, the article investigates a poeticized debate, in which versified proverbs or apothegms are employed as tools of argumentation. In addition I examine the mnemonic function of reiterated rhymes on politics, and emotive song as an expressio…
The Figure of Yan Zhuoju 顏涿聚 in Ancient Chinese Literature
Contributing to the surging interest in rhetorical uses of anecdotal narratives in ancient China, the present article investigates sources about a purported follower of Confucius going by the name of Yan Zhuoju, or variants thereof. The main advantage of focusing on such an obscure figure is that extant sources can be exhaustively analysed – an approach intractable for more fully documented personalities – in order to gauge the mechanisms which c…
Delinquent Fathers and Philology Lun Yu 13.18 and Related Texts
Investigating textual parallels between pre-Qin writings such as Han Feizi and Lüshi chunqiu and Confucius's statement in Lun yu 13.18 that “a father covers up for his son and a son for his father,” this article argues that the Lun yu passage is most likely derived from the version in Lüshi chunqiu or a closely related version. This has several consequences for scholarly interpretations of the Lun yu . It serves as a reminder that the Lun yu is a…
Paul Fischer. Shizi
Coming to Terms with the Masters
The present review article discusses in detail Wiebke Denecke’s monograph The Dynamics of Masters Literature: Early Chinese Thought from Confucius to Han Feizi (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 2010), a work that aspires to rewrite the history of the classical age of Chinese philosophy. Proceeding from a consideration of the genre of “masters literature” as a retrospectively constructed bibliographic and generic class, this…
Recent Monographs on Confucius and Early Confucianism
Il confucianesimo: i fondamenti e i testi. By Maurizio Scarpari. Turin: Einaudi, 2010. vi + 300 pp. Confucius: A Life of ought and Politics. By Annping Chin. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. xiv + 268 pp. Confucius. By Remi Mathieu. Sagesses eternelles. Paris: Entrelacs, 2006. 271 pp. Lives of Confucius. By Michael Nylan and omas Wilson. New York: Doubleday, 2010. 304 pp. Sang jia gou: wo du Lunyu —— . By Li Ling . Revised edition. Two v…
Die Geschichte der Aussprüche des Konfuzius
The Singing Sage
The present article explores uses of verse in direct speech attributed to Confucius (551-479bce) within works compiled mainly during the Han dynasty (206bce-220ce). Analysing short prose narratives and dialogues, the article investigates a poeticized debate, in which versified proverbs or apothegms are employed as tools of argumentation. In addition I examine the mnemonic function of reiterated rhymes on politics, and emotive song as an expressio…
Die Geschichte der Aussprüche des Konfuzius
Recent Monographs on Confucius and Early Confucianism
Il confucianesimo: i fondamenti e i testi. By Maurizio Scarpari. Turin: Einaudi, 2010. vi + 300 pp. Confucius: A Life of ought and Politics. By Annping Chin. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. xiv + 268 pp. Confucius. By Remi Mathieu. Sagesses eternelles. Paris: Entrelacs, 2006. 271 pp. Lives of Confucius. By Michael Nylan and omas Wilson. New York: Doubleday, 2010. 304 pp. Sang jia gou: wo du Lunyu —— . By Li Ling . Revised edition. Two v…
Coming to Terms with the Masters
The present review article discusses in detail Wiebke Denecke’s monograph The Dynamics of Masters Literature: Early Chinese Thought from Confucius to Han Feizi (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 2010), a work that aspires to rewrite the history of the classical age of Chinese philosophy. Proceeding from a consideration of the genre of “masters literature” as a retrospectively constructed bibliographic and generic class, this…
Delinquent Fathers and Philology Lun Yu 13.18 and Related Texts
Investigating textual parallels between pre-Qin writings such as Han Feizi and Lüshi chunqiu and Confucius's statement in Lun yu 13.18 that “a father covers up for his son and a son for his father,” this article argues that the Lun yu passage is most likely derived from the version in Lüshi chunqiu or a closely related version. This has several consequences for scholarly interpretations of the Lun yu . It serves as a reminder that the Lun yu is a…
Paul Fischer. Shizi
The Figure of Yan Zhuoju 顏涿聚 in Ancient Chinese Literature
Contributing to the surging interest in rhetorical uses of anecdotal narratives in ancient China, the present article investigates sources about a purported follower of Confucius going by the name of Yan Zhuoju, or variants thereof. The main advantage of focusing on such an obscure figure is that extant sources can be exhaustively analysed – an approach intractable for more fully documented personalities – in order to gauge the mechanisms which c…
The Singing Sage
The present article explores uses of verse in direct speech attributed to Confucius (551-479bce) within works compiled mainly during the Han dynasty (206bce-220ce). Analysing short prose narratives and dialogues, the article investigates a poeticized debate, in which versified proverbs or apothegms are employed as tools of argumentation. In addition I examine the mnemonic function of reiterated rhymes on politics, and emotive song as an expressio…
Chunyu Kun
The present article undertakes a comprehensive study of ancient Chinese anecdotal and dialogic sources on Chunyu Kun, who is presented in a variety of roles such as trickster, sophist, envoy, jester, procurer of talent for his ruler, and erudite at the so-called Jixia academy which was allegedly established in the pre-imperial state of Qi. The article outlines how certain motifs and topics were reused and, in the process, reshaped by the narrativ…
Milburn, Olivia
A number of texts from ancient China are rarely explored by historians or specialists in intellectual history.Collections of anecdotal or otherwise difficult to classify materials such as Shuoyuan 說苑, Xinxu 新序, and Han shi waizhuan 韓詩外傳 have fared particularly badly, and with the exception of Han shi waizhuan, these works have not been considered worthy of being translated into Western languages so far.Up to now, the Yanzi chunqiu 晏子春秋 (hencefort…
Intertextuality and Memory in Early Chinese Writings
This article aims to illustrate the usefulness of analytical approaches to early Chinese writings which center on effects of textual memory. Due to a dearth of contemporaneous descriptions, concrete practices of oral transmission, dictation, performance, and interpretation in Early China largely lie beyond the ken of present-day scholarship. But recurrence of linguistic-stylistic elements testifies to the presence of these elements in an author's…
Debates around Jixia
The character of the scholarly patronage community of Jixia in the Warring States (480-221 B.C.E.) polity of Qi has been hotly debated. Was it indeed an "academy," as it has been retrospectively dubbed? What kind of activities did resident scholars engage in? What teachings did they propound, what writings did they compose? Following the lead of research by Nathan Sivin and Andrew S. Meyer, the present article does not treat Jixia as an academy p…
Documentation and Argument in Early China
Costly Signaling in Ancient Chinese Narratives
Seemingly reckless, wasteful, or self-harming actions depicted in narrative sources are embedded in the philosophical and political discourse of Warring States and early imperial China (around the third to the first century bce). Signaling theory unveils the underlying rationality of many such acts by demonstrating how they allow actors with conflicting interests to pursue their goals while reducing costs compared to alternative scenarios. Ancien…
Chinese history and philosophy (12 works) · History (12 works) · Art (10 works) · Literature (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Japanese History and Culture (6 works) · China (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Narrative (5 works) · Political science (5 works)