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Author:

Sibau, Maria Franca, author.

Title:

Reading for the moral : exemplarity and the Confucian moral imagination in seventeenth-century Chinese short fiction / Maria Franca Sibau.

Publisher:

State University of New York Press,

Copyright Date:

2018

Description:

xii, 231 pages : illustrations, facsimiles ; 24 cm

Subject:

Chinese fiction--Ming dynasty, 1368-1644--History and criticism.
Chinese fiction--Qing dynasty, 1644-1912--History and criticism.
Literature and morals--China--History--17th century.
Short stories, Chinese--History and criticism.
Ethics in literature.
Chinese fiction.
Chinese fiction--Ming dynasty.
Ethics in literature.
Literature and morals.
Qing Dynasty (China)
Short stories, Chinese.
China.
1368-1912
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-222) and index.

Contents:

Introduction: Reading for the moral -- Filial quests -- Filial transactions -- The spectrum of loyalty -- Female exemplarity and the violence of virtue -- Interchangeable brothers -- Friends in need and friends in deed.

Summary:

Reading for the Moral offers an innovative reassessment of the nature of moral representation and exemplarity in Chinese vernacular fiction. Maria Franca Sibau focuses on two little-studied story collections published at the end of the Ming dynasty, Exemplary Words for the World (Xingshi yan, 1932) and Bell in the Still Night (Qingye zhong, c. 1645). Far from being tediously moralistic tales, these stories of loyal ministers, filial children, chaste widows, and selfless friends provide a deeper understanding of the five cardinal relationships central to Confucian ethics. They explore the inherent tension between what we might call textbook morality, on the one hand, and untidy everyday life, on the other. The stories often take a critical view of mechanical notions of retribution, countering it with the logic of virtue as its own reward. Conflict between passion and duty is typically resolved in favor of duty redefined with a palpable sense of urgency. In constructing vernacular representations of moral exemplars from the recent historical past rather than from remote or fictitious antiquity, the story compilers show how these virtues are not abstract or monolithic norms, but play out within the contingencies of time and space--back cover.

Series:

SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture

ISBN:

1438469896
9781438469898

OCLC:

(OCoLC)1002302758

LCCN:

2017031612

Locations:

OVUX522 -- University of Iowa Libraries (Iowa City)