Mourning in late imperial China: filial piety and the state

As a conquest dynasty, Qing China's new Manchu leaders desperately needed to legitimize their rule. To win the approval of China's native elites, they developed an ambitious plan to return Confucianism to civil society. Filial piety, the core Confucian value, would once again be upheld by...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Kutcher, Norman A. (Author)
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1999
Series:Cambridge studies in Chinese history, literature, and institutions
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Summary:As a conquest dynasty, Qing China's new Manchu leaders desperately needed to legitimize their rule. To win the approval of China's native elites, they developed an ambitious plan to return Confucianism to civil society. Filial piety, the core Confucian value, would once again be upheld by the state, and laborious and time-consuming mourning rituals, the touchstones of a well-ordered Confucian society, would be observed by officials throughout the empire. In this way, the emperor would be following the ancient dictate that he 'govern all-under-heaven with filial piety'. Norman Kutcher's study of mourning looks beneath the rhetoric to demonstrate how the state - unwilling to make the sacrifices that a genuine commitment to proper mourning demanded - quietly but forcefully undermined, not reinvigorated, the Confucian mourning system. With acute sensitivity to language and its changing meanings, Kutcher sheds light on a wide variety of issues that are of interest to historians of late Imperial China
Item Description:Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015)
Physical Description:1 Online-Ressource (xiv, 210 Seiten) Illustrationen, Karten
ISBN:9780511572746
DOI:10.1017/CBO9780511572746

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