Scholars and Their Marginalia in Late Imperial China (Sinica Leidensia)

"Marginalia are a variety of writings and symbols written by readers in book margins. This study focuses on marginalia and explores the reading practices and the scholarly culture of late Imperial China. Beginning in the late Ming and early Qing, more scholars devoted themselves to reading and collating ancient texts. They developed the habit of writing marginalia while reading, of transcribing other readers' marginalia, and of printing marginalia, all of which formed a particular scholarly culture. This book explores how this culture developed, gained momentum, and shaped the styles, lives, thoughts, and mind states of scholars in the Qing dynasty"--ISBN : 9789004508156 Contents Figures and Tables Conventions Chart of Historical Periods Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Chinese Interpretive Texts: Annotations, Commentaries and Marginalia 1 Contents and Features 1.1 Zhushu/Annotations: Proposing Meanings from the Classics 1.2 Pingdian/Commentaries: In-Depth Understanding of LiteraryFeatures 1.3 Pijiao/Marginalia: Hand-Written Reading Responses 2 Forms and Circulation 2.1 Annotations: From Oral Transmission to Writing on Paper; from Separation to Combination 2.2 Commentaries: Reshaping Chinese Books 2.3 Marginalia: Anywhere, Any Color Chapter 3 The “Reading Seed”: He Zhuo and His Marginalia 1 He Zhuo: The “Reading Seed” 2 He Zhuo’s Scholarly Transition 3 A Pioneer of Textual Criticism 4 Reading He Zhuo’s Historical Comments 5 The Stigmatization of a Scholar Chapter 4 Scholarly Communities and the Transcription of Marginalia 1 He Zhuo and His Students: Transcription of the Teacher’s Marginalia 2 Scholarly Communities and the Transcription of Marginalia 3 Booksellers and Scribes and Their Role in the Marginalia Culture 4 Shaping the Text of the Classics 5 Marginalia Culture Chapter 5 The Writing of Scholarly Lives in Marginalia 1 Temporal and Spatial Records in Marginalia 2 The Artistic Lives of Scholars 3 The Mental World of Scholars Chapter 6 Edited Reading: The Printing of Marginalia in the Qing Dynasty 1 The Printing of the Yimen dushu ji 1.1 From Notation Book to Marginalia 1.2 The Compilation of the Yimen dushu ji 1.3 The Selection and Omission of Marginalia: The Hou Hanshu as Example 2 Printing Marginalia alongside the Main Text 3 The Printing of Collation Notes 4 The Flourishing of Collation Biji 5 The Merits of Printing Chapter 7 Epilogue 1 Marginalia and the Evidential Research 2 Invisible Scholars and the Intellectual History of the Qing Appendix Books Containing He Zhuo’s Marginalia and Their Transcriptions Bibliography Index "Marginalia are a variety of writings and symbols written by readers in book margins. This study focuses on marginalia and explores the reading practices and the scholarly culture of late Imperial China. Beginning in the late Ming and early Qing, more scholars devoted themselves to reading and collating ancient texts. They developed the habit of writing marginalia while reading, of transcribing other readers' marginalia, and of printing marginalia, all of which formed a particular scholarly culture. This book explores how this culture developed, gained momentum, and shaped the styles, lives, thoughts, and mind states of scholars in the Qing dynasty"-- Provided by publisher Marginalia are a variety of writings and symbols written by readers in book margins. This study focuses on marginalia and explores the reading practices and the scholarly culture of late Imperial China. Beginning in the late Ming and early Qing, more scholars devoted themselves to reading and collating ancient texts. They developed the habit of writing marginalia while reading, of transcribing other readers'marginalia, and of printing marginalia, all of which formed a particular scholarly culture. This book explores how this culture developed, gained momentum, and shaped the styles, lives, thoughts, and mind states of scholars in late Imperial China. The first book on the “marginalia culture” of late Imperial China, this study introduces the features of marginalia, examines scholars’ reading practices and scholarly style centred on marginalia and explores how this “marginalia culture” shaped Chinese texts and scholars’ thought.