David B Honey 
A History of Chinese Classical Scholarship, Volume III 
Northern And Southern Dynasties, Sui, And Early Tang

This exciting third volume of David B. Honey’s comprehensive history of Chinese thought begins with China after nomadic invaders overran the northern regions of the historic kingdom. The differentiation between scholarly emphases—northern focus on the traditional pedagogical commentary, and southern classical school’s more innovative commentary—led to an emphasis on the interpretation of the overall message of a text, not a close reading of smaller sections. As Honey explains, serious attention to the phonological nature of Chinese characters also began during in this long era. Based on the work of earlier Sui dynasty classicists, Kong Yinga and his committee produced the Correct Meaning commentary to the Five Classics during the early Tang Dynasty, which is still largely normative today. The book demonstrates that the brooding presence of Zheng Xuan, the great textual critic from the Eastern Han dynasty, still exerted enormous influence during this period, as his ritualized approach to the classics inspired intellectual followers to expand on his work or impelled opponents to break off in new directions.

A propos de l’auteur

David B. Honey was born in El Paso Texas, but grew up in Southern California. Graduating from UCLA in 1980, he earned his MA (1984) and Ph D (1988) degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1987, he has taught classical Chinese and Chinese literature at Brigham Young University where he was honored as the Humanities Professor of Chinese from 2020 through 2022. His major publications reflect variegated research interests. The Rise of the Medieval Hsiung-nu: The Biography of Liu Yuan (1990), Incense at the Altar: Pioneering Sinologists and the Development of Classical Chinese Philology (2001), a work composed in Chinese, Xifang jingxueshi gailun 西方經學史概論 (A Short History of Classical Scholarship in the West) (2012), and The Southern Garden Poetry Society: Literary Culture and Social Memory in Guangdong (2013) all represent these ancillary interests. A Chinese translation of Incense at the Altar is currently in press. Professor Honey’s main research commitment is represented by this publication of the first three volumes of a projected five-volume set titled A History of Chinese Classical Scholarship. Vols. one (2018) and two (2019) have appeared in Chinese translation by Social Sciences Academic Press, Beijing.