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Physiognomy in Ming China: Fortune and the Body
Series: - Sinica Leidensia, Volume: 149
Author:
In Physiognomy in Ming China: Fortune and the Body, Xing Wang investigates the intellectual and technical contexts in which the knowledge of physiognomy (xiangshu) was produced and transformed in Ming China (1368-1644 C.E.). Known as a fortune-telling technique via examining the human body and material objects, Xing Wang shows how the construction of the physiognomic body in many Ming texts represent a unique, unprecedented ‘somatic cosmology’. Applying an anthropological reading to these texts and providing detailed analysis of this technique, the author proves that this physiognomic cosmology in Ming China emerged as a part of a new body discourse which differs from the modern scholarly discourse on the body.
Xing Wang obtained his DPhil from the University of Oxford in 2018. He is a Junior Research Fellow at Fudan University in Shanghai, and specializes in the study of Chinese divination and Chinese Buddhism
"This volume would be of immense use to those interested in Chinese religion. On a much broader level, this volume has the potential to be of immense use to those interested in general divination practices. In Wang’s own words, the understanding one will gain from this volume will “allow us to re- examine other kinds of techniques that have existed in different religions and social communities, as well as look at how religion, divination, and popular cultivation are techniques central to human life.”
– Joseph Chadwin, University of Vienna, Religious Studies Review 47/3 (2021).
"This book’s theoretically informed approach to a detailed case study of physiognomic theory and practice in Ming China will book reviews interest anyone trying to understand the complex history of thinking with, about, and through the body during any period in Chinese history and likely anywhere else as well." - Marta Hanson, T’oung Pao 108 (2022)
– Joseph Chadwin, University of Vienna, Religious Studies Review 47/3 (2021).
"This book’s theoretically informed approach to a detailed case study of physiognomic theory and practice in Ming China will book reviews interest anyone trying to understand the complex history of thinking with, about, and through the body during any period in Chinese history and likely anywhere else as well." - Marta Hanson, T’oung Pao 108 (2022)
Readers interested in Chinese divination, Chinese Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism, Chinese medical history, history of the body, anthropological theories of the body, history of magic and witchcraft, and the intellectual history of late imperial China.