Chronicles and the Invention of Time in Early China

Lecture on July 5, 2009, 6:15 pm, Seminar Room 311

Mark Edward Lewis, Stanford University

Chronicles and the Invention of Time in Early China

 

Abstract

This talk will examine how the Qin conquest of China and the imposition of a single, imperial chronicle led to the emergence of a clear idea of time as a shared, unitary dimension that could be denominated in numbers providing a universal standard for chronologically fixing events.  It will include an extended comparison with the parallel process in the West, in which the rise of the Roman empire provided the foundation for a pan-Mediterranean time that underlay the emergence of our B.C./A.D. chronicle standard.

 

Professor Lewis

is one of the leading China scholars in America. His books include: 

Sanctioned Violence in Early China, 1990,

Writing and Authority in Early China, 1999,

The construction of Space in Early China, 2005,

The Early Chinese Empires, Qin and Han 2007,

China's cosmopolitan Empire: the Tang dynasty, 2009

 

more on the speaker:

Mark Lewis, Stanford University

Verantwortlich: SH
Letzte Änderung: 28.02.2012
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