The Inscription of Remnant Things
Zhang Dai’s “Twenty-Eight Friends”
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 15028022 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Thomas Kelly (0000-0001-8826-8113, Harvard University Press, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-43 |
| Publication date | 2021-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Late imperial China (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0884-3236 • E-ISSN: 1086-3257 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/late.2021.0004 |
| OpenAlex | W3175263941 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 15 |
The existential dilemma of whether or not to live under a new dynasty, coupled with political restrictions on what human voices might say, inspired nuanced forms of identification with the properties of inanimate objects in early Qing literature. 1 Things (wu) helped poets articulate feelings of redundancy or recalcitrance, while in certain cases registering palpable fears of depersonalization. 2 Historian and renowned prose stylist Zhang Dai (1597-?1684) went further than other seventeenth-century authors in casting "objects of the former dynasty" (qianchao yiwu) as protagonists in his responses to the transition. 3 In an extensive, yet neglected collection of inscriptions (ming) on his family's possessions, Zhang conceived of things as faithful interlocutors, asking what lessons his appointed "friends" (you) might impart amid the turbulence of the Ming cataclysm. This unique sequence invites its readers to reflect on how to represent historical trauma not from an anthropocentric viewpoint, but by attending to the experiences of household things. * I am grateful to Steven Miles and the two reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions
Archaeology · China · Zhàng · Chinese history and philosophy · Computer Science · History
Name and actuality in early Chinese thought
Remembrances
Superfluous Things
Trauma and Transcendence in Early Qing Literature
The Cultural Biography of a Musical Instrument
Historian of the Strange
The Collector, the Connoisseur, and Late-Ming Sensibility
Inscribing the Artifact and Inspiring Trust
Flawed Jade
The Decadent Chalice
Building Culture in Early Qing Yangzhou
Name and Actuality in Early Chinese Thought
A Classified Guide to the Thirteen Classes of Chinese Prose
Fateful Attachments
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |