Celestial Signs and Classical Rhetoric in Early Imperial China

Considers how sign-reading fit into broader understandings of the human and cosmic worlds in Han times.

Celestial Signs and Classical Rhetoric in Early Imperial China considers how the reading of celestial signs-including comets, strange clouds, halos, rainbows, and planets in retrograde motion-fit into broader understandings of the human and cosmic worlds in Han times. Advancing a cultural studies approach to celestial signs, Jesse J. Chapman traces the theory and practice of sign-reading across a range of genres, including technical manuals, historical narratives, and memorials to the throne. Moving from variegated materials in an early tomb to historical treatises compiled over several centuries, Chapman demonstrates that rhetoric and ideals drawn from classical texts gradually became fundamental sources of authority for interpreters of celestial signs. Sign-reading in practice proved both flexible and context-dependent, and interpreters of celestial signs rarely, if ever, read omens in isolation. Celestial signs became meaningful in the context of historical understanding, personal experience, the state of the empire, and the life of the court. Reading omens meant reading the state of the world at a particular moment in time.

"Chapman's approach to omens in early China is original, persuasive, and significant. His principal claim is that the interpretation of omens—'sign-reading'—was in the hands of specialists in the Warring States and earlier periods but became a part of the intellectual and political equipment of the emerging class of classically-trained scholar-officials during the Han period. Well organized and well written, this book will be welcomed by scholars in the field of early China." — John S. Major, coauthor of Ancient China: A History

Jesse J. Chapman received his PhD in Chinese Language from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently the assistant editor for Early China.

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