Myth and the Making of History

Narrating Early China with Sarah Allan

Constance A. Cook, Christopher J. Foster, Susan Blader, Constance A. Cook, Christopher J. Foster, Susan Blader

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781438497693, 9781438497686
• eBook ISBN: 9781438497709
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: History

Sheds new light on the relationship between myth and history in ancient China and the central role they have played in shaping early Chinese thought.

Myth and the Making of History examines the relationship between myth and history in early China, a topic that has been explored by American paleographer and scholar of ancient China Sarah Allan throughout her career. Allan has worked at a crucial and sensitive intersection, where myth and history collide at the very heart of China's origin story. Her work has created an intellectual space in which the disciplines of philosophy, history, anthropology, archeology, philology, and literature have come together, helping to change the way scholars conceive of historical patterns in China's past. In Myth and the Making of History, eleven senior and emerging scholars, from both China and the West, respond to the intellectual challenge raised by Allan's theoretical model of analysis of mythologized and historical figures (and even dynasties) that have intrigued scholars for generations and play a central role in the Chinese historical imagination. The book will be of great interest to all scholars and students of China-of whatever level and discipline-and, indeed, those concerned with other early civilizations as well.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 The Place of Yi Yin in the Shang Pantheon
• 2 Cao E, the Filial Water Goddess: Gender and Text in the Promotion of a Two-Thousand-Year-Old Cult
• 3 An Examination of Commentaries to Analects 7.14, “Confucius Listened to the Shao Performance in Qi”
• 4 The Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project and Archaeological Research on the Xia Dynasty
• 5 Formation of the “Nine Provinces” according to the Tribute Payments Recorded in Oracle-Bone and Bronze Inscriptions
• 6 The Tsinghua University Yue Gong qi shi Manuscript and Township Administration in the State of Yue during the Spring and Autumn Period
• 7 Marriage and Social Networks in Zhou China: Reflections on the Rules Governing Female Names in Bronze Inscriptions
• 8 The Faces of Cao Gui: Fact and Meaning in Warring States and Early Han Historiography
• 9 Historical Narratives in Early Chinese Classics: The Case of the “Great King Leaving Bin” in Transmitted Texts and the Bamboo Slips of the Zhou xun
• 10 Rebuilding King Wen: Paratext as Intellectual Biography in the Yi Zhou shu Preface
• 11 Forging a “Meta-tradition”: The Distinctive Philosophy of the Huainanzi
• Afterword
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Back Cover