The Empire of the Text

Writing and Authority in Early Imperial China
During the Chinese Qin-Han period, there arose a regime of textual authority - overlapping but not coinciding with imperial authority. Drawing on research, this work analyzes the early elite culture, particularly in literature and in linguistic, intellectual and institutional history.
This unique study argues that in the Qin-Han period, there arose in China a regime of textual authority_one that overlapped but did not coincide with imperial authority. Drawing on a wide range of research and theory, Connery makes an original contribution to the analysis of early imperial elite culture, particularly in the fields of literature and linguistics, intellectual, and institutional history. The author provides new contexts for thinking about canonization and textual transmission systems, an innovative framework for analysis and discussion of the early imperial elite, a socio-ideological exploration of one strand of late Han 'Confucian' thought, and a critique of the concepts of subjectivity and the 'birth of lyricism' in China.

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