Publishing, Culture, and Power in Early Modern China - Tapa blanda

"This book has accomplished much and deserves our praise and careful attention." -- SHARP News "This is a carefully researched and cogently argued study of the publishing industry in late Ming China Chow's insightful exploration of the intersection between printing, examination-based mobility, and political power demonstrates that the relationship between the political field and the field of cultural production was profoundly altered by the late-Ming commercial publishing boom. His book is a major contribution to the field of late-imperial Chinese studies." -- Thomas D. Curran * Sacred Heart University * "The author is to be applauded for taking up unexplored questions in the history of Chinese printing, for engaging with analytical frameworks derived from sociologists such as Pierre Bourdieu and literary theorists such as Gerald Genette, and for introducing a comparative perspective." -- Technology and Culture "[This] monograph is very well researched and makes a valuable contribution to the historiography of early modern China as well as the history of publishing." -- Sixteenth Century Journal "Within the past two decades, the history of print and book culture in late imperial China has engaged the interest and efforts of scholars throughout the world....Kai-wing Chow's book, a thought-provoking addition to this literature, analyzes the social, cultural, and political impact of commercial and private publishing of examination literature in the late Ming." -- Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies

This path-breaking book argues that printing-both with woodblocks and with movable type-exerted a profound influence on Chinese society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.