The End of the Chinese 'Middle Ages' - 9780804726665

The End of the Chinese 'Middle Ages'Essays in Mid-Tang Literary Culture\nAuthor(s): Stephen Owen\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Stanford University Press, United States\nImprint: Stanford University Press\nISBN-13: 9780804726665, 978-0804726665\nSynopsis\nThis book explores, through a series of essays, a set of interrelated elements that define the literary culture of China in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. This period, known as the Mid-Tang, broke with many of the intellectual habits of the \""middle period\"" of Chinese culture and adumbrated many of the characteristics of China in the Song and later periods.\n\n The first essay examines \""singularity,\"" representations of identity as an assertion of superiority over others and as an alienation that brings rejection by others. The second essay addresses different ways of representing landscapes, showing the ways in which the underlying order of nature had become a problem in the Mid-Tang. The third essay discusses the tend.