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Based on first-hand historical materials, this book explores the various aspects of literary communication during the Song Dynasty in China.The book investigates the single-channel dissemination of poetry and ci works, the dissemination of literary collections, the dissemination through wall inscriptions, the oral dissemination of Song ci, the remuneration and commercialization of literature in the Song Dynasty, the paths to fame for Song writers, the non-literary factors in the dissemination of literature and the dissemination of literary works through paintings and songs. The author provides insights into the six major questions in the study of literary communication: Who disseminates, where, how, what, to whom and the effects of dissemination. The author also seeks to provide detailed answers to the following questions. What was the role of female singers in both domestic and official entertainment? What were the costs and prices of the books? Who paid the authors? What methods did writers use to gain fame and social recognition?This work will be essential reading for scholars and students of Chinese studies, communication studies and media and cultural studies.

Under the Song Dynasty, China experienced rapid commercial growth and monetization of the economy. In the same period, the austere ethical turn that led to neo-Confucianism was becoming increasingly prevalent in the imperial bureaucracy and literati culture. Tracing the influences of these trends in Chinese intellectual history, All Mine! explores the varied ways in which eleventh-century writers worked through the conflicting values of this new world.Stephen Owen contends that in the new money economy of the Song, writers became preoccupied with the question of whether material things can bring happiness. Key thinkers returned to this problem, weighing the conflicting influences of worldly possessions and material comfort against Confucian ideology, which locates true contentment in the Way and disdains attachment to things. In a series of essays, Owen examines the works of writers such as the prose master Ouyang Xiu, who asked whether tranquility could be found in the backwater to which he had been exiled; the poet and essayist Su Dongpo, who was put on trial for slandering the emperor; and the historian Sima Guang, whose private garden elicited reflections on private ownership. Through strikingly original readings of major eleventh-century figures, All Mine! inquires not only into the material conditions of happiness but also the broader conditions of knowledge.

This book is the Cambria Sinophone World Series, headed by Professor Victor H. Mair (University of Pennsylvania) and includes color images. This book examines the interconnection between the idea of monstrosity and the emergence of Chinese cultural identity since the Song dynasty. Using four case studies on the developmental history of the fox demon, Zhang Fei, Sun Wukong, and Zhong Kui in vernacular literature, it explores how monstrosity, through its traditional connection to foreignness, played a crucial role in shaping society's idea regarding the self/other dichotomy. Chinese vernacular literature matured during the Southern Song period and coincided with society's growing apprehension of foreignness. As society's perception of the other fluctuated between acceptance and abhorrence following the Mongolian conquest of the Middle Kingdom and the subsequent political desire to return to a fixation with the concept of Han during the Ming dynasty, the idea of monstrosity was adopted by these works as a logical vessel for contemplating the question of identity. Unlike other forms of written work in China, vernacular literature developed out of the necessity to cater to the mass. As such, they provide a unique window to understand society's reaction to the cultural and political milieu of the time. By resituating the production of these works within this cultural backdrop, the importance of this study lies both in the foregrounding of the manifestation of Chinese cultural identity in the literary and the proposition of its importance to our understanding of the cultural politics since the Song dynasty. Although academics have long been aware of the importance of the cultural milieu of the Song-Yuan-Ming period to the development of Chinese cultural identity, there remains a lack of attention to the evolution of this identity during this time. The aim of this book is to explore the way cultural identity is encapsulated by the idea of monstrosity and how vernacular literature offers a window into society's continuous attempt to redefine this concept, in response to a shifting political landscape. But beyond its timely discussion of the background and historical genealogy of how Chineseness is conceptualized, this book specifically addresses the effect of the contentiousness of ethnicity on the identity question. In doing so, it explores how this gradual historical transformation of Chinese cultural identity is closely tied to xenophobia and the reimagination of foreignness as reflected in the idea of monstrosity. Students and scholars of Late Imperial Chinese literature are likely to find this book refreshing and informative. However, its overall thrust of the development of Chinese cultural identity should also appeal to readers who are interested in Early Modern Chinese history, especially those fascinated by questions concerning the formation of Chinese cultural identity.