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2 books match the query 'Early China'

cover of A Song for One or Two: Music and the Concept of Art in Early China

A Song for One or Two

Music and the Concept of Art in Early China

Kenneth J. DeWoskin

University of Michigan Press, 1982

This study of theories of music and art in China from the classical period to the Six Dynasties is based on analysis and interpretation of textual and archaeological evidence. Its wide-ranging sources include mythology, aesthetic philosophy, musical lore, and notation systems. The evolution of theories of music and art is considered in the context of cosmological and moral philosophy.
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cover of The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China

The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China

Michelle H. Wang

University of Chicago Press, 2023

A study of early Chinese maps using interdisciplinary methods. 

This is the first English-language monograph on the early history of maps in China, centering on those found in three tombs that date from the fourth to the second century BCE and constitute the entire known corpus of early Chinese maps (ditu). More than a millennium separates them from the next available map in the early twelfth century CE. Unlike extant studies that draw heavily from the history of cartography, this book offers an alternative perspective by mobilizing methods from art history, archaeology, material culture, religion, and philosophy. It examines the diversity of forms and functions in early Chinese ditu to argue that these pictures did not simply represent natural topography and built environments, but rather made and remade worlds for the living and the dead. Wang explores the multifaceted and multifunctional diagrammatic tradition of rendering space in early China.
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