Love, Hatred, and Other Passions ― Questions and Themes on Emotions in Chinese Civilization

As the title suggests, these essays take a provocative approach to Chinese history, focusing on an anthropological aspect of human experience: the affective world. The contributors, who are specialists in Asian studies and Chinese history, analyze literary, historical and judicial material to illuminate their basic philosophical concepts, as well as their terminology. The topics covered include melancholy in Imperial China, emotions in Chinese medical texts, and the emotional condition of revenge as represented in pre-modern Chinese fictional narratives. Santangelo (history of China, Universita L'Orientale of Naples) provides an introduction to the articles and a conclusion in which he considers the analysis of non-literary documents. Annotation c2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Paolo Santangelo is Professor of History of China at the Universita “L’Orientale” of Naples. He has published extensively on the social and anthropological history of pre-modern and modern China, including Sentimental Education in Chinese History. An Interdisciplinary Textual Research on Ming and Qing Sources (Brill, 2003) and is editor of the journal Ming Qing Yanjiu.Donatella Guida, Ph.D. (1997) in History of China, Universita “L’Orientale” of Naples, is Lecturer at the Department of Asian Studies of the same University and Deputy Editor of the journal Ming Qing yanjiu. She has published several essays on Southeast Asia as seen in Chinese late imperial sources, and is currently working on the textual analysis of emotional terms in the novel Rulin Waishi.