Oversea Studies Of The History Of The Books In China

From the 1960s onward,there emerged a new approach of book history that was radically different from traditional bibliography in Europe and America.Scholars plowing in this new field focus on the printing,publishing,circulating,and reading of the books,and thus situate the books in the framework of social and cultural history to investigate problems that could link books with the culture and society they were in,such as whether books served as catalyst for social revolutions,generating a body of academic literature.Under the influences of them,their counterparts in the field of Chinese history,especially those laboring in North America,have started to conduct the research of book history in China,too.My thesis attempts to provide a general overview of this field by tracing the formation and development of the field,teasing out the basic concerns,concepts,theories,and methodologies,as well as pointing out the major problems of it.Specifically,the nascent field of the book history of China mirrors that of Europe and America especially in the sense of the applications of theories and methods.In retrospect,the field of book history in the West developed in a highly interdisciplinary manner since historical,bibliographical,and literary studies converged to form its foundation.Accordingly,the historians of Chinese books adopt draw inspirations from Western theories such as the statistical methods of the Annales School,the theory of the "communication circuit" that highlights the integrity of a process encompassing publishing,circulating,and so forth,the theory of sociology of text that emphasizes the importance of the carriers of the books in producing meaning,Chartier's reading history,and the theory of the "paratext" that focuses on paratexts such as titles,front pages,and layouts.Through the analysis of the periodization,contents(the life history of books),and methods(reading history),this thesis argues that though using Western methods neatly,the scholars still expose a sign of being influenced too deeply and many problems.The central one is the monotony of framework:the whole field is striving to answer the question of the impact of books on the society.The periodization,concerns,contents,and methods all reveal that the scholars measure the social,political,or cultural transformations of China in the framework of "book-society".