Sensing the broadening world : the birth of incense culture in song dynasty China (960-1279)
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation investigates how incense, a once highly exclusive commodity of foreign origins, became widely available since the eleventh century and revolutionized China's sensibility of scents. I examine representations of incense in poetry, tales, treatises, catalogues (pu 譜), and paintings by the scholar-officials, the shaping force of Song society and culture. My analysis uncovers how exquisite scents served as an important medium for Song literati to reconceptualize spirituality, officialdom, private life, knowledge, and cultural others. I demonstrate how the scholar-officials created the xiangpu 香譜 genre to systematically define incense for the first time in Chinese history. The fascination with incense also led to unprecedentedly in-depth explorations of the far south, the main source of domestic incense supply, which reshaped the cultural image of this traditionally stigmatized and underrepresented region. While my research fits with the current "material turn" in sinology, it extends to the growing field of sensory studies. I call attention to scents, one prominent yet neglected topic in China and the global past, establishing the significance of incense in relation to aesthetics, social class, ethnicity, and knowledge production. I argue that the process of knowing and integrating incense into Chinese culture and literature reflected an epistemological change among Song scholar-officials. The invention of incense culture is indicative of the period's growing interest in individual experience, material culture, local distinctiveness, economic incentives, and practical knowledge, all of which were decisive factors in steering China to early modernity.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2023; ©2023 |
| Publication date | 2023; 2023 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Jia, Qian |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Egan, Ronald |
| Thesis advisor | Egan, Ronald |
| Thesis advisor | Kieschnick, John |
| Thesis advisor | Vinograd, Richard |
| Degree committee member | Kieschnick, John |
| Degree committee member | Vinograd, Richard |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Qian Jia. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/rw251yt5381 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2023 by Qian Jia
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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