Birth in Ancient China. BOOK (2025)

Review of "Birth in Ancient China: A Study of Metaphor and Cultural Identity in Pre-Imperial China"

Body and Religion, 2018

In this small, dense book, Constance A. Cook and Xinhui Luo critically analyze ancient Chinese texts to reveal how the topic of birth was of key importance to understandings of lineage and cultural heritage during ancient China. Offering their readers a unique lens into early comprehension of the female experience of childbirth, the authors also explore the more abstract themes of birth as connected to issues of mythical creation, internal transformation, genealogy, and cosmic reproduction. Focusing on material in China’s earliest birthing records, which date back to the Shang period (second millennium BCE), the book also includes translation and exegesis of the Chu ju 楚居, a fourth-century BCE bamboo manuscript devoted to the topic of birth and its relationship to royal lineage. The book shows how birth and the birthing body, though deeply marginalized and underrepresented topics within the humanities today, were focal to the cultural and philosophical developments of ancient Chinese thought and practice.

Metaphor and Meaning: Thinking Through Early China with Sarah Allan

SUNY, 2024

"Metaphor and Meaning" is part of a three-book series, with "Bone, Bronze, and Bamboo" and "Myth and the Making of History," that celebrates Sarah Allan and the integral role she has played in the immense growth and development of early China as a field. "Metaphor and Meaning" explores early Chinese philosophy, religion, and the language through which they were communicated—both metaphoric and linguistic. While picking up on numerous topics that Allan has discussed over the years in her collected works, the present volume pays special homage to her methodological interest in the application of conceptual metaphor theory to the study of early China. https://sunypress.edu/Books/M/Metaphor-and-Meaning

Metaphor and Meaning in Early China

Dao, 2011

Western scholarship on early Chinese thought has tended to either dismiss 10 the foundational role of metaphor or to see it as a uniquely Chinese mode of 11 apprehending the world. This article argues that, while human cognition is in fact 12 profoundly dependent on imagistic conceptual structures, such dependence is by no 13 means a unique feature of Chinese thought. The article reviews empirical evidence 14 supporting the claims that human thought is fundamentally imagistic; that 15 sensorimotor schemas are often used to structure our understanding of abstract 16 concepts; that these schemas can be selectively combined to result in novel 17 structures; and that there are inextricable connections between body, emotion, and 18 thought in both everyday and philosophical cognition. It also provides a review of a 19 recent trend where, explicitly or not, scholars from a variety of backgrounds have 20 begun to take metaphor more seriously as a foundational bearer of philosophical 21 meaning in early China. 22 Keywords Metaphor . Emotion . Chinese thought . Chinese philosophy . Embodied 23 cognition 24 25

Metaphor and Meaning in Early China 5

2010

8 9 Abstract Western scholarship on early Chinese thought has tended to either dismiss 10 the foundational role of metaphor or to see it as a uniquely Chinese mode of 11 apprehending the world. This article argues that, while human cognition is in fact 12 profoundly dependent on imagistic conceptual structures, such dependence is by no 13 means a unique feature of Chinese thought. The article reviews empirical evidence 14 supporting the claims that human thought is fundamentally imagistic; that 15 sensorimotor schemas are often used to structure our understanding of abstract 16 concepts; that these schemas can be selectively combined to result in novel 17 structures; and that there are inextricable connections between body, emotion, and 18 thought in both everyday and philosophical cognition. It also provides a review of a 19 recent trend where, explicitly or not, scholars from a variety of backgrounds have 20 begun to take metaphor more seriously as a foundational bearer of philoso...

Doing Things with Metaphors in Contemporary China.pdf

The ‘Chinese dream’ sums up China’s goals in the twenty-first century. Since its first ap- pearance in 2012, the concept of the Chinese dream has been the core of Xi Jinping’s “new thoughts, new ideas and new arguments”. At the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China it was elevated as one of the guiding principles of ‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’, which represents the latest effort towards the Sinicization of Marx- ism. This paper aims at casting light on whether the discourse on the Chinese dream carries new contents or is based on old concepts ‘camouflaged’ as new. To do so, it will analyse the ideological implications of those ‘creative metaphors’ that compose the discursive mosaic of the Chinese dream as used by Xi Jinping in his political speeches. Drawing on the studies on conceptual metaphors and frame analysis, this study analyses those metaphorical expressions that are purposely outlined in the transcription of the speeches with the aim of signaling the originality of “Xi’s language style”. The final aim is to provide insight into what these ‘creative metaphors’ are doing in contemporary China. Results show that ‘creative metaphors’ in the discourse on the Chinese dream are meant to set the agenda on revitalising morality within the Party as well as ‘unifying’ values in today’s Chinese society, and most of them are far from being new in Chinese political discourse.

Weaving Metaphors and Cosmo-political Thought in Early China

T'oung Pao, 2015

The deployment of weaving/netting metaphors in ancient Chinese socio-political thought has been noted, but the degree to which those metaphors may have prefigured cosmo-political thought in the earliest period has not been explored. This essay traces the crucial role of weaving technology in providing a fertile source for the constitutive image schema nearly ubiquitous in early cosmo-political discourse. Le déploiement des métaphores faisant intervenir le tissage ou le maillage dans la pensée socio-politique de la Chine ancienne a bien été remarqué, mais on n’a pas exploré le degré auquel ces métaphores peuvent avoir préfiguré la pensée cosmo-politique des périodes les plus reculées. Cet essai retrace le rôle crucial de la technologie du tissage dans la formation du schéma constitutif de représentation pratiquement omniprésent dans le discours cosmo-politique fondamental.

The Theme of the Precocious Child in Early Chinese Literature

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 128.143.23.241 on Thu, In early Chinese literature, exemplary children are most often precocious children; they are preternaturally wise or filial, and their births are often marked by the appearance of miraculous signs. Although the theme of the juvenile prodigy does not become commonplace until Han times, this motif is almost as old as Chinese literature itself.l This article will examine how the formulaic motifs associated with juvenile precocity evolved from their mythical origins into a series of conventional tropes that became a regular feature of Han biography.

Representations of Childhood and Youth in Early China (review)

China Review International, 2005

'The Great Mother': A conceptual analysis of mother and infant metaphors in DàoDéJīng

This paper examines the metaphorical conceptualization of the core philosophical terms in DàoDéJīng, namely, 道dào, “the way,” and 德dé, “efficacy.” Based on the notion of conceptual metaphor, it can be argued that these two philosophical terms have gained meaning through conceptual metaphors that have motherhood and infancy as the source domain concepts. An analysis of the conceptual mappings of these metaphors finds that human body-related terms serve as the cognitive basis for the understanding of DàoDéJīng’s arguments on cosmology, morality and spirituality. Based on the findings of this study, I demonstrate that the meanings of some key philosophical terms in the text, such as dào and dé, can be explored by examining metaphorical structures at a conceptual level. This supports the view that conceptualization arises from the embodied experience of human beings and, furthermore, highlights the role of culture when examining the conceptualization of philosophical terms that emerge from a given cultural context.

Doing Things with Metaphors in Contemporary China

54 | Supplemento | 2018

The ‘Chinese dream’ sums up China’s goals in the twenty-first century. Since its first appearance in 2012, the concept of the Chinese dream has been the core of Xi Jinping’s “new thoughts, new ideas and new arguments”. At the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China it was elevated as one of the guiding principles of ‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’, which represents the latest effort towards the Sinicization of Marxism. This paper aims at casting light on whether the discourse on the Chinese dream carries new contents or is based on old concepts ‘camouflaged’ as new. To do so, it will analyse the ideological implications of those ‘creative metaphors’ that compose the discursive mosaic of the Chinese dream as used by Xi Jinping in his political speeches. Drawing on the studies on conceptual metaphors and frame analysis, this study analyses those metaphorical expressions that are purposely outlined in the transcription of the ...