Marginalia are a variety of writings and symbols written by readers in book margins. This study focuses on marginalia and explores the reading practices and the scholarly culture of late Imperial China. Beginning in the late Ming and early Qing, more scholars devoted themselves to reading and collating ancient texts.
They developed the habit of writing marginalia while reading, of transcribing other readers’ marginalia, and of printing marginalia, all of which formed a particular scholarly culture. This book explores how this culture developed, gained momentum, and shaped the styles, lives, thoughts, and mind states of scholars in late Imperial China.
Yinzong Wei, Ph.D. (UBC, 2019) is an Associate Researcher at Wuhan University. His published articles on Chinese philology and book history include “Marginalia Transcription and Scholarly Culture in the Qing Dynasty”
Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture 8:2 (2021).
"With an interdisciplinary approach that draws upon intellectual history, cultural history, new bibliographical studies, and social history, this volume offers a new way of viewing texts. Those interested in textual analysis (especially Confucian textual analysis) will have much to gain from this volume."
– Joseph Chadwin,
Religious Studies 49.2 (June 2023)
List of Figures and Tables Conventions Chart of Historical Periods
1
Introduction
2
Chinese Interpretive Texts: Annotations, Commentaries and Marginalia 1 Contents and Features
2 Forms and Circulation
3
The “Reading Seed”: He Zhuo and His Marginalia 1 He Zhuo: The “Reading Seed”
2 He Zhuo’s Scholarly Transition
3 A Pioneer of Textual Criticism
4 Reading He Zhuo’s Historical Comments
5 The Stigmatization of a Scholar
4
Scholarly Communities and the Transcription of Marginalia 1 He Zhuo and His Students: Transcription of the Teacher’s Marginalia
2 Scholarly Communities and the Transcription of Marginalia
3 Booksellers and Scribes and Their Role in the Marginalia Culture
4 Shaping the Text of the Classics
5 Marginalia Culture
5
The Writing of Scholarly Lives in Marginalia 1 Temporal and Spatial Records in Marginalia
2 The Artistic Lives of the Scholars
3 The Mental World of the Scholars
6
Edited Reading: The Printing of Marginalia in the Qing Dynasty 1 The Printing of the Yimen dushu ji
2 Printing Marginalia alongside the Main Text
3 The Printing of Collation Notes
4 The Flourishing of Collation Biji
5 The Merits of Printing
7
Epilogue 1 Marginalia and the Evidential Research
2 Invisible Scholars and the Intellectual History of the Qing
Appendix: Books Containing He Zhuo’s Marginalia and Their Transcriptions Bibliography Index
Scholars and students of Asian studies, and those who interested in Chinese intellectual history.