Knowledge and Text Production in an Age of Print: China, 900-1400 (Sinica Leidensia, 100)

The essays in this volume seek to flesh out the diversity of Chinese textual production during the period spanning the tenth and fourteenth centuries when printing became a widely used technology. By exploring the social and political relations that shaped the production and reproduction of printed texts, the impact of intellectual and religious formations on book production, the interaction between print and other media, readership, and the growth of collections, the contributors offer the first comprehensive examination of the cultural history of book production in the first 500 years of the history of printing. In an afterword historian of the early modern European book, Ann Blair, reflects on the volume's implications for the comparative study of the impact of printing. To count grains of sand on the ocean floor : changing perceptions of books and learning in the Song dynasty -- Ronald Egan Book collecting in Jiangxi during the Song dynasty -- Joseph P. McDermott Early printing in China viewed from the perspective of local gazetteers -- Joseph Dennis Early Buddhist illustrated prints in Hangzhou -- Shih-shan Susan Huang The uses of print in early Quanzhen Daoist texts -- Lucille Chia Governance through medical texts and the role of print -- TJ Hinrichs The cultural logics of map reading : text, time and space in printed maps of the Song empire -- Hilde De Weerdt Chen Jun's outline and details : printing and politics in thirteenth-century -- Pedagogical histories -- Charles Hartman Challenging official history in the Song and Yuan dynasties : the record of the three kingdoms -- Anne E. McLaren -- Afterword : rethinking western printing with Chinese comparisons -- Ann Blair. The essays in this volume seek to flesh out the diversity of Chinese textual production during the period spanning the 10th and 14th centuries when printing became a widely used technology