'This Culture of Ours': Intellectual Transitions in T'ang and Sung China - Softcover

"Bol's book is a major accomplishment, intellectual history at its best. Every serious student of the history and the literary and intellectual culture of traditional China will want to read Bol's study and will need to take it into account."-Choice "Bol's book is a major accomplishment, intellectual history at its best. Bol deals with a very large topic as he relates changes in the underlying aims and objects of intellectual activity to the changing historical situation and composition of China's elite. Along with a broad interpretative framework, Bol offers new perspectives on influential figures, and subtle readings from a wide range of sources. He begins in the seventh century with the literary-cultural orientation of early T'ang court scholarship and concludes in the Sung with the Neo-Confucian emphasis on ethics, which met the needs of a new local elite and remained dominant until the 17th century. Every serious student of the history and the literary and intellectual culture of traditional China will want to read Bol's study and will need to take it into account."-Choice

Addressing one of the great themes in premodern Chinese history, this book traces the transformation of the shared culture of the Chinese learned elite from the seventh to the twelfth centuries.