Volume 28, Number 7 · April 30, 1981
Take Back Your Ming
By Jonathan D. Spence
1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline
by Ray Huang
Yale University Press, 278 pp., $19.95
Li Zhi, philosophe maudit (1527-1602) Volume I
by Jean-François Billeter
Librairie Droz, 320 pp., 80 francs
The Peony Pavilion (Mudan Ding)
by Tang Xianzu, translated by Cyril Birch
Indiana University Press, 343 pp., $22.50
The Chinese Vernacular Story
by Patrick Hanan
Harvard University Press, 276 pp., $18.50
Until very recently the great expanse of the Ming dynasty, which ruled in China from 1368 to 1644, was largely uncharted in Western historiography. The dynasty was seen either as having come at the end of a great tradition that had been dominated by the artistic force of the T'ang and Sung, or as being a little too early for 'modern' Chinese history, which could be seen to pick up momentum in the eighteenth century, or even the seventeenth, but certainly not earlier. Furthermore the 'decline of the Ming,' a messy and protracted business apparently spanning almost a century from the 1550s down to the 1640s, was seen as reflecting little credit on China's imperial and bureaucratic institutions.
Review, 2936 words
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