The Empire of the Text: Writing and Authority in Early Imperial China

This work argues that, during the Qin-Han period, there arose in China a regime of textual authority - one that overlapped but did not coincide with imperial authority. Drawing on a range of research and theory, Connery analyzes the early elite culture, particularly in the fields of literature and of linguistic, intellectual and institutional history. The book provides: contexts for thinking about canonization and textual transmission systems; a framework for analysis and discussion of the early imperial elite; a socio-ideological exploration of one strand of late Han Confucian thought; and a critique of the concepts of subjectivity and the birth of lyricism in China.