In this book, Xin Conan-Wu presents a radically revisionist argument on Zhu Xi’s (1130–1200) Neo-Confucian philosophy of education. Via analyses of unfamiliar landscapes and the poems of the White-Deer Grotto Academy, Yuelu Academy, and Wuyi Retreat, Conan-Wu argues that when praxis speaks for orthodoxy, the eclipsed pedagogue casts a liberal light on the enshrined philosopher.
Neo-Confucian senses of the gaze and place engendered Zhu Xi’s natural pedagogy and mapped the environment of his academies. This book cross-examines the textual traces and their innate vision, the physical sites and their transhistorical milieux, the Eight Views and Nine Bends and their afterlives in China and Korea. It unfurls an academy education, mutually reinforced by classical learning and self-cultivation, and sustained by a lure of the Supreme Joy of Confucian sagehood.
Xin Conan-Wu (吳欣), Ph.D. (2008), University of Bristol, is Margaret Hamilton Associate Professor of Art History at William & Mary. She has published English and Chinese monographs, articles and edited volumes on landscape in ancient China and the contemporary world, including “Garden Art” in A Companion to Chinese Art (Wiley, 2015).
Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction
Prologue: Zhu Xi in His Time
1 The Changing World of the Educated Elite and Their Anxieties
2 Zhu Xi (1130–1200)
Part 1: Visuality and the Academy
1 An Archaeology of Visualities
1 The Regime of the Classical Gaze
2 Buddhism and Visualization
3 Visuality in Landscape Poetry
4 Xie Lingyun (385–433)
5 Wang Wei (ca. 699–761) and the Tang Poets
6 Synopsis
2 Learning and Visuality at White-Deer Grotto
1 The Restoration
2 Zhu Xi on Learning
3 The Gaze that Probes the Principle
4 A Neo-Confucian Inquiry of Visual Experience
Part 2: Spatiality and the Academy
3 An Archaeology of Spatialities
1 Patterns of Spatiality since Antiquity
2 Spatialities of Emptiness
3 The Eight Views of Xiaoxiang
4 Synopsis
4 The Ten Scenes of Yuelu [Academy]
1 The Meeting of Zhu-Zhang and Song Scholar’s Gardens
2 A Philosophical Path between Mountain and Water
3 A Field of Confucian Wisdom
4 An Interpretation of the Agency of Place
Part 3: Place-Making and Pedagogy
5 Environment and Pedagogical Practices
1 The Site: External Appearance versus Inner Activities
2 The Supreme Joy amid Mountain-and-Water
3 The Environment as Pedagogical Apparatus
6 Singing along the Nine-Bend Stream
1 Wuyi Retreat and the Boat Songs
2 The Afterlife of the Nine Bends
3 An Art of Place-Making
7 The Eight Views Revisited
1 The Gazetteers of Yuelu
2 Eight Views of the Academy
3 A Genealogy of the Pedagogy
8 Epilogue
1 Zhu Xi’s Natural Pedagogy
2 Neo-Confucian Contributions to Changes in Cultural Sensibilities
3 The Pervasive Role of Emotions
List of Characters Bibliography Index
For all interested in Zhu Xi, Chinese philosophy, East Asian traditional education, Confucian academies, Neo-Confucian learning, pedagogy and the environment, place-making, mapping, landscape poetry, history of vision, intellectual history, and comparative studies in pre-modern education.