Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Weird Confucius: Unorthodox Representations of Confucius in History

Weird Confucius: Unorthodox Representations of Confucius in History

Lu, Zhao

Hardcover

Chinese HistoryConfucianism

ISBN10: 1350327522
ISBN13: 9781350327528
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: Mar 21 2024
Pages: 256
Weight: 1.13
Height: 0.56 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

Spanning antiquity until the present, Zhao Lu analyses the eclectic and fictitious representations of Confucius that have been widely celebrated by communities of people throughout history.

While mainstream scholarship mostly considers Confucius in terms of his role as a celebrated man of wisdom and as a teacher with a humanistic worldview, Zhao addresses the weirder representations. He considers depictions of Confucius as a prophet, a fortune-teller, a powerful demon hunter, a shrewd villain of 19th century American newspapers, an embodiment of feudal evils in the Cultural Revolution, and as a cute friend.

Zhao asks why some groups would risk contradicting the well-accepted image of Confucius with such representations and shows how these illustrations reflect the specific anxieties of these communities. He reveals not only how people across history perceived Confucius in diverse ways, but more importantly how they used Confucius in daily life, ranging from calming their anxiety about the future, to legitimizing a dynasty, stereotyping Chinese people, and even to forging a new sense of history.

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