F. Mutschler & A. Mittag éd., Conceiving the Empire. China and Rome Compared, Oxford, 2008.
Price: £85.00 (Hardback)
ISBN-13: 978-0-19-921464-8
Publication date: 13 November 2008
502 pages, 35 in-text illustrations, 234x156 mm
The essays in Conceiving the Empire explore the mental images, ideas, and symbolical representations of `empire' which developed in the two most powerful political entities of antiquity: China and Rome. While the central focus is on historiography, other related fields are also explored: geography and cartography, epigraphy, art and architecture, and, more generally, political thought and the history of ideas. Written by a collaborative team of experts in Sinology and Classical Studies, the volume focuses the attention of the emerging discipline of East-West cross-cultural studies on an essential feature of the ancient Mediterranean and Chinese worlds: the emergence of `empire' and the enduring influence of the `imperial' order.
Table des matières
I. The Birth of the Imperial Order
A. The Idea of `Empire': Its Genesis before and its Unfolding after the Emergence of the Empire
1. City and Empire , Albrecht Dihle
2. Interlude: Kingship and Empire , Zhu Weizheng
3. The Rhetoric of `Empire' in the Classical Era in China , Michael Nylan
B. Historiography and the Emerging Empire
1. Imagining the Empire? Concepts of `Primeval Unity' in Pre-Imperial Historiographic Tradition , Yuri Pines
2. The Emergence of Empire: Rome and the Surrounding World in Historical Narratives from the Late Third Century BC to the Early First Century AD , Huang Yang & Fritz-Heiner Mutschler
II.The Firmly Established Empire
A. Imperial Grandeur and Historiography à la Grande
1. The Problem of `Imperial Historiography' in Rome , Fritz-Heiner Mutschler
2. Forging Legacy: The Pact between Empire and Historiography in Ancient China , Achim Mittag
B.The Spatial Dimension of the Unified World: Imperial Geography and Cartographical Representations
1. Mapping China. The Spatial Dimension of the Unified World: Imperial Geography and Cartographical Representations in Early Imperial China , Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer
2. Text and Image: Mapping the Roman World , Katherine Clarke
C. Self-Image and the Formation of Imperial Rhetorics
1. Announcements from the Mountains: The Stele Inscriptions of the Qin First Emperor , Martin Kern
2. The Res Gestae Divi Augusti and the Roman Empire , Christian Witschel
D. The Power of Images: Imperial Order and Imperial Aura as Represented in Art and Architecture
1. Image and Empire: The Shaping of Augustan Rome , Rolf Michael Schneider
2. Imperial Aura and the Image of the Other in Han Art , Michèle Pirazzoli-t'Serstevens
III. The Waning of the Imperial Order
A. History-Writing in the Face of Crisis
1. The Impact of the Empire's Crises on Historiography and Historical Thinking in Late Antiquity , Hans Armin Gärtner & Ye Min
2. Empire on the Brink: From the Demise of the Han Dynasty to the Fall of the Liang Dynasty. Notes on Chinese Historiography in the Wei-Jin-Nanbeichao Period , Achim Mittag & Ye Min
B. When the Imperial Order Disintegrates: Rethinking the `Empire' under Religious Auspices
1. New Tendencies, Religious and Philosophical, in the Roman Empire of the Third to Early Fifth Centuries , Gerard O'Daly
2. New Tendencies, Religious and Philosophical, in the Chinese World of the Third through Sixth Centuries , Thomas Jansen
Epilogue
Source: Oxford UP
