Patterns of the earth : writing geography in early medieval China
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This study explores the first flourishing of geographical writing in China during the early medieval period (ca. 200--600 CE). It examines the reasons for the initial emergence of geographical writing, its development of new spatial conceptualizations, and the cultural work that it accomplished. The dissertation argues that dramatic shifts in the political, demographic, and religious landscape of this distinctive period of imperial fragmentation inspired a re-evaluation of classical geographic notions of a monolithic China at the center of the world. Since this once substantial body of texts has now been lost, I rely primarily upon the sole extant comprehensive geography from the period, Li Daoyuan's Shuijing zhu (Commentary on the Classic of Waterways), as well as other fragmentary remnants of other texts and retrospective accounts from the seventh century, to piece together the evidence. I also employ Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in a spatial analysis of these texts. My findings reveal an emic spatial representation of China that runs contrary to the official orthodoxy of a court-centered, Sino-centric imperial geography. These sources manifest a culturally subversive spatial model that prioritized environmental over political geography, emphasized regional over imperial cohesiveness, and displaced China from the center of the world.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Felt, David Jonathan |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of History. |
| Primary advisor | Lewis, Mark |
| Thesis advisor | Lewis, Mark |
| Thesis advisor | Dien, Albert E |
| Thesis advisor | Sommer, Matthew Harvey, 1961- |
| Thesis advisor | Wigen, Kären, 1958- |
| Advisor | Dien, Albert E |
| Advisor | Sommer, Matthew Harvey, 1961- |
| Advisor | Wigen, Kären, 1958- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | David Jonathan Felt. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of History. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2014. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2014 by David Jonathan Felt
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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