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- All Subjects: Chinese language--Etymology.
- Creators: Oh, Young Kyun
Description
Yuan Mei 袁枚 (1716-97) is often thought of as a rebellious figure within the eighteenth-century intellectual and literary landscape. His perceived rejection of nearly all aspects of Confucian values was so extreme that he was even dubbed a "sinner against the teachings of Confucius." This thesis examines six stories within Yuan Mei's Zi buyu 子不語 (What Confucius Did Not Talk About) and, through close reading, shows how Yuan Mei utilizes each foreign group's physical traits and their ability to verbally and/or ethically communicate with the Chinese protagonist, in order to reflect their adherence to Confucian values and acceptance of Chinese imperial authority to arrange them along a spectrum of humanness that reflects the Chinese-foreign distinction. Furthermore, by examining each story in their historical and literary contexts, it is discovered that nearly every foreign group portrayed in Zi buyu is based on historical groups that actually existed on the periphery of the Qing empire, and that the different degrees of foreignness of each subject reflect each historical foreign group's acquiescence to or rebellion against the imperial authority of the Qing empire. Contrary to commonly held opinions, Yuan Mei's negotiation of foreignness demonstrates his own deep subscription to Confucian ethics and adherence to imperial order.
ContributorsCampos, Miles (Author) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Thesis advisor) / Oh, Young Kyun (Committee member) / West, Stephen H. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The Shuowen jiezi 說文解字 [Explaining depictions of reality and analyzing graphs of words] (100 AD), written by Xu Shen 許慎of Eastern Han dynasty, is known as the first comprehensive dictionary for Chinese characters. However, the earliest complete edition of the Shuowen available today is the Songkanben 宋刊本 (Woodblock printed edition from the Song dynasty). As a result, Songkanben is employed as the primary source in most studies on the Shuowen conducted by scholars after the Song dynasty. In 1982, the discovery of Tangxieben Shuowen mubu canjuan 唐寫本說文木部殘卷 (The incomplete juan under wood classifier of the Shuowen written in manuscript form in the Tang), shed light on a new angle of view in examining the Shuowen, mostly developed from Songkanben. In this paper, after an introduction on the Songkanben by Xu brothers, as well as the discovery and dating of the incomplete manuscript form of Shuowen from Tang, a comparative study between the Songkanben and Tangxieben of the Shuowen from five aspects: order of entries, the appearance of the Small Seal script of a few entries, the explanation of the meaning of some characters, the graphic analyze and the fanqie 反切 phonetic notation for some entries. The hypothesis presented in this thesis is that Tangxieben, with its antiquarian value, advantages and features, though not older for sure, may belong to an older tradition. And it suggests that there is a scholarship of the Shuowen during the Tang. And Xiao Xuben 小徐本by Xu Kai 徐鍇 (920-74), from some specific aspects in the comparison, tends to be closer to Tangxieben compared with Da Xuben 大徐本by Xu Xuan 徐鉉 (917-92). Consequently, as the original text of the Shuowen is not available today and what we have studied on the Shuowen basically is based on the editions by Xu brothers, it would be reasonable to keep this in mind, and refer to different editions of the Shuowen and critically examine them in philological studies related to it when apply and study the Shuowen nowadays.
ContributorsGao, Can (Author) / Oh, Young Kyun (Thesis advisor) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Committee member) / West, Stephen H. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017