Imperial-Time-Order: Literature, Intellectual History, and China's Road to Empire

Description

Imperial-Time-Order is an engagingly written critical study on a persistent historical way of thinking in modern China. Defined as normalization of unification and moralization of time, Qian suggests, the imperial-time-order signifies a temporal structure of empire that has continued to shape the way modern China developed itself conceptually. Weaving together intellectual debates with literary and media representations of imperial history since the late Qing period, ranging from novels, stage plays, films, to television series, Qian traces the different temporalities of each period and takes time as the analytical node by which issues of empire, nation, family, morality, individual and collective subjectivity are constructed and contested." Contents Acknowledgements Note on Romanization and Script List of Figures Introduction Part 1 The Imperial-Time-Order Chapter 1 The Imperial-Time-Order: The Eternal Retur nof the Chinese Empire Part 2 Time, Unity, and Morality from the Late Qing to Mao’s China Chapter 2 Suspended Time: Grounding the Present in the Late Qing Chapter 3 Split Time: Enlightenment and Its Discontent Chapter 4 The Continuous Time: Heroes in the “Protracted War” Chapter 5 The Transitional Time: Staging “the People” and the “Nation” in Mao’s China Part 3 The Return of “Empire” in the Post-Mao Period Chapter 6 Resurgent Time: The Return of “Empire” in Post-Socialist Representation Chapter 7 Love or Hate: The First Emperor on Screen Chapter 8 The Fascinating Empire: Emperors in Contemporary Novels Chapter 9 Tianxia Revisited: Empire and Family on the Television Screen Chapter 10 Becoming-Minority: Chinese Characteristics in Minority Historical Fiction