| FA-51420-05 | Research Programs: Fellowships for University Teachers | Anna M. Shields | The Literature of Friendship in Late Medieval China | 7/1/2005 - 3/31/2006 | $40,000.00 | Anna | M. | Shields | | | | Arizona Board of Regents | Tucson | AZ | 85721-0073 | USA | 2004 | Asian Literature | Fellowships for University Teachers | Research Programs | 40000 | 0 | 40000 | 0 |
In the first book-length study of friendship in China, I examine the significant body of texts composed among elite male friends in the mid-Tang era (c. 780-830), the cultural watershed of late medieval China. I explore a wide range of texts--such as letters, exchange poems, prefaces to collections, and funerary texts--by more than a dozen writers in the networks of Han Yu and Bai Juyi to demonstrate the increasing visibility of friendship as a social relation and its importance to literary composition in the mid-Tang. My analysis of the literature of friendship--writing by, for, and about men defined as friends--will reveal how late medieval writers worked together to transform "wen," literature in its broadest sense. |