Autobiographical Dream Records in Seventeenth Century China
Lynne Struve
Professor Emerita, History & East Asian Languages and Cultures, Indiana University Bloomington.
In the late Ming period, certain trends in the religious, philosophical, and sociopolitical thought of Chinese intellectuals combined to generate both a heightened interest in subjective dream experience and a surge in various forms of self-writing. The result - many self-accounts that included records of the author's own dreams - was accentuated by the severe psychological stress and turmoil suffered by intellectuals during the fall of the Ming dynasty and the Manchu-Qing conquest of China, which occupied most of the seventeeth century. Such records offer vaulable insights on the subjective consciousness of individuals, on how non-waking experience was understood in later-imperial China, and on the self-salvific and rhetorical uses of dream-state reports by writers in an age of intense change.
Friday, September 17, 2010
12:00 - 1:15 pm
Ballantine Hall 004
Light refreshements will be served. You are also welcome to bring your own lunch.
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