Memory in Medieval China

Memory is not an inert container but a dynamic process. It can be structured by ritual, constrained by textual genre, and shaped by communities’ expectations and reception. Urging a particular view of the past on readers is a complex rhetorical act. The collective reception of portrayals of the past often carries weighty implications for the present and future. The essays colle...

Memory is not an inert container but a dynamic process. It can be structured by ritual, constrained by textual genre, and shaped by communities’ expectations and reception. Urging a particular view of the past on readers is a complex rhetorical act. The collective reception of portrayals of the past often carries weighty implications for the present and future. The essays collected in this volume investigate various aspects of memory in medieval China (ca. 100-900 CE) as performed in various genres of writing, from poetry to anecdotes, from history to tomb epitaphs. They illuminate ways in which the memory of individual persons, events, dynasties, and literary styles was constructed and revised through processes of writing and reading.

Contributors include: Sarah M. Allen, Robert Ashmore, Robert Ford Campany, Jack W. Chen, Alexei Ditter, Meow Hui Goh, Christopher M. B. Nugent, Xiaofei Tian, Wendy Swartz, Ping Wang.

Wendy Swartz (Ph.D., UCLA) is Associate Professor of Chinese Literature at Rutgers University. She has published monographs, articles, translations, and edited volumes on China, including Reading Philosophy, Writing Poetry: Intertextual Modes of Making Meaning in Early Medieval China (Harvard, 2018).

Robert Ford Campany (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Professor of Asian Studi...

Wendy Swartz (Ph.D., UCLA) is Associate Professor of Chinese Literature at Rutgers University. She has published monographs, articles, translations, and edited volumes on China, including Reading Philosophy, Writing Poetry: Intertextual Modes of Making Meaning in Early Medieval China (Harvard, 2018).

Robert Ford Campany (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Professor of Asian Studies and Religious Studies at Vanderbilt University. He has published books, articles, and edited volumes on China, including Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China (Hawai’i, 2009).