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A Tender Voyage is the first full-length study of the history of
childhood and children's lives in late imperial China. The author
draws on an extraordinary range of sources to analyze both the
normative concept of childhood-literary and philosophical-and the
treatment and experience of children in China. The study begins
with the history of pediatrics and newborn care and their evolution
over time. The author moves on to the social environment of the
child, including models of upbringing and expected behavior and the
treatment of different kinds of children, including the rebellious
and the "gentle" child. She examines the role of the mother,
notably her close and complex relations with her sons, and the
broader emotional world of children, their relationships with the
adults around them, and the destructive power of death. The last
section discusses concepts of childhood in China and the West.
Throughout, the study keeps in view the issue of representation
versus practice, the role of memory, and the importance of
listening for what is not said.
A Tender Voyage is the first full-length study of the history of
childhood and children's lives in late imperial China. The author
draws on an extraordinary range of sources to analyze both the
normative concept of childhood - literary and philosophical - and
the treatment and experience of children in China. The study begins
with the history of pediatrics and newborn care and their evolution
over time. The author moves on to the social environment of the
child, including models of upbringing and expected behavior and the
treatment of different kinds of children, including the rebellious
and the gentle child. She examines the role of the mother, notably
her close and complex relations with her sons, and the broader
emotional world of children, their relationships with the adults
around them, and the destructive power of death. The last section
discusses concepts of childhood in China and the West. The study
keeps in view throughout the issue of representation versus
practice, the role of memory, and the importance of listening for
what is not said.
Case studies fascinate because they link individual instances to
general patterns and knowledge to action without denying the
priority of individual situations over the generalizations derived
from them. In this volume, an international group of senior
scholars comes together to consider the use of cases to produce
empirical knowledge in premodern China. They trace the process by
which the project of thinking with cases acquired a systematic and
public character in the ninth century CE and after. Premodern
Chinese experts on medicine and law circulated printed case
collections to demonstrate efficacy or claim validity for their
judgements. They were joined by authors of religious and
philosophical texts. The rhetorical strategies and forms of
argument used by all of these writers were allied with historical
narratives, exemplary biographies, and case examples composed as
aids to imperial statecraft.
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