Empire of Great Brightness

Visual And Material Cultures of Ming China, 1368-1644

Bibliographic Data

ID19970896
AuthorsCraig Clunas (corresponding author)
Year2007
Pages288
Publication date2007-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueEmpire of Great Brightness (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherSchool of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1604/9780824831493
OpenAlexW1537963939
Open LibraryOL8162044M
ISBN9780824831493
LanguageEN
Citations received17

Empire of Great Brightness is an innovative and accessible history of a high point in Chinese culture, seen through the riches of its images and objects. Not a simple emperor-by-emperor history, it instead introduces the reader to themes that provide stimulating and original points of entry to the culture of China: to ideas of motion and rest; to the position occupied by writing and objects featuring writing; and, to ideas about pleasure, about violence and about ageing. It challenges notions of Ming China as a culture closed off from the rest of the world by emphasizing the vibrant interactions between China and the rest of Asia at this period. Craig Clunas uses a wide range of pictures and objects from Ming China to illustrate familiar areas such as painting and ceramics (including the blue-and-white porcelain of the period, arguably the world's first global brand'). He draws on items from public and private collections from around the world, which will be new even to specialists, including weapons, architecture, textiles and items of dress, printed books (from Ming pornography to the world's first illustrated reading book for children). He also examines contemporary sources from government edicts to novels and phrasebooks of colloquial Chinese as well as the most recent scholarship to illuminate this most diverse period of Chinese art and culture. Empire of Great Brightness offers a varied and stimulating resource for all scholars of China's cultural history, for historians and art historians of related aspects of the early modern world, and for readers who are intrigued by China's past

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · China · Emperor · Empire · Literature · Media studies · Movie theater · Period (music) · Pleasure · Sociology · Visual arts · Visual culture · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Psychology · 1368-1912 · 960-1644 · Art, chinese · Asia - China · Asian · Chinese Art · civilization · History - General · History - General History · History in art · Ming dynasty, 1368-1644 · Ming-Qing dynasties · Ming-Qing dynasties, 1368-1912

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