The Promise and Peril of Things: Literature and Material Culture in Late Imperial China

by Wai-Yee Li

Book Overview

Winner, 2023 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

Our relationship with things abounds with paradoxes. People assign value to objects in ways that are often deeply personal or idiosyncratic yet at the same time rooted in specific cultural and historical contexts. How do things become meaningful? How do our connections with the world of things define us? In Ming and Qing China, inquiry into things and their contradictions flourished,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0231201036
• ISBN13: 9780231201032
• Release Date: May 2022
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 376 Pages
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.0" x 8.9"