Teaching and Transformation in Popular Confucian Literature of the Late Qing
Teaching and Transformation in Popular Confucian Literature of the Late Qing
by Katherine L Alexander
University of Michigan Press, 2025
ISBNs
Cloth: 978-0-472-07758-8
Paper: 978-0-472-05758-0
eISBN: 978-0-472-90514-0 (OA)
About the Book
The Taiping Civil War (1851–1864) was one of the most destructive wars in Chinese history, with the death toll estimated between twenty and thirty million. What visions did survivors have for restoring their fractured society once the war ended? Katherine L. Alexander’s Teaching and Transformation in Popular Confucian Literature of the Late Qing approaches these questions through literature by examining the works of evangelical Confucian teacher Yu Zhi (1809-1874), who gave a voice to the zealous side of conservative Confucian reform efforts before, during, and after the Taiping War. His works offer radical visions of a world that could be restored through collective effort and goodness, while also revealing the shifting nature of power and the cracks in Qing society.
Yu’s works complicate the picture of socio-moral reform, particularly the Confucian mission of jiaohua (teaching and transformation). Though he viewed the disasters of the late Qing as the natural consequence of jiaohua’s failure to compete against socially disruptive media, such as vernacular fiction and theatrical productions, he also wanted reformers to engage closely with these genres. Yu became a vocal advocate of teaching with moral vernacular literature that he believed met commoners at their level. He emphasized the hope that by writing, printing, and performing such texts, every member of his audience could be transformed into teachers themselves, restoring society from the bottom up.
Yu’s works complicate the picture of socio-moral reform, particularly the Confucian mission of jiaohua (teaching and transformation). Though he viewed the disasters of the late Qing as the natural consequence of jiaohua’s failure to compete against socially disruptive media, such as vernacular fiction and theatrical productions, he also wanted reformers to engage closely with these genres. Yu became a vocal advocate of teaching with moral vernacular literature that he believed met commoners at their level. He emphasized the hope that by writing, printing, and performing such texts, every member of his audience could be transformed into teachers themselves, restoring society from the bottom up.
About the Author
Katherine L. Alexander is Associate Professor of Chinese at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Reviews
“Katherine Alexander has given us the first English-language monograph focused on the Confucian evangelist Yu Zhi, one of the most fascinating figures of an era when the Chinese world was torn apart and remade. She proves that a morally conservative figure was at the same time a creative revolutionary. Through exemplary research she shows how Yu’s experiments with popular performance literature were sincere attempts to imagine the moral interests and agency of the uneducated majority, in turn granting us rare, if still indirect, access to their perspectives.”— Rania Huntington, University of Wisconsin–Madison
“The world of late nineteenth-century Chinese scholars was vibrant with religious aspirations, moral anxiety, and eschatological expectations. Yu Zhi is one of the most fascinating authors who spoke out loud about these aspirations and fears. Katherine Alexander’s masterful book does full justice to his unique voice, his travails, and his testimony to a troubled world.”— Vincent Goossaert, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris
Tags
Confucianism, 1861-1912, Confucian influences, Teaching, Study and teaching, China, Asia, 19th century, Social conditions, Cultural & Ethnic Studies, Social Science, History
Open Access Information
License: CC BY-NC
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