Nappi, Carla Suzan (Author)
This dissertation investigates natural history in early modern China, seen primarily through the lens of the Bencao gangmu (1596), a massive work of materia medica and natural history written by Ming scholar Li Shizhen (1518-1593) in the last decades of the sixteenth century. The Bencao functioned as a stage on which many great debates over the natural world in China were enacted, and this thesis is devoted primarily to exploring and understanding the epistemological mechanics of those arguments. Fact-making in the Bencao and other natural history texts relied on a combination of innovative citation practices, example-making, and negotiation between sensory and textual evidence that together created an epistemological environment wherein scholars created notions of "reasonableness" and of "absurdity." I argue that a deep commitment to the centrality of transformation and change in the universe shaped Li Shizhen's epistemology and informed all aspects of the Bencao gangmu . Li invoked varied sets of authoritative sources and focused his comments on different themes when treating different categories of natural objects, from the primacy of foundational notions of change in discussing members of the Five Phases, to the importance of poetry as a source of authority when discussing plants, to the role of analogy in debating the morality of using human body parts in food and medicine. This dissertation explores the thematic and epistemic nuances of each major category treated in the Bencao gangmu in turn, situating the debates therein within a broader context of late Ming texts on plants, animals, and stones. The discussions within the Bencao gangmu resonated through a history of reinterpretations of the work, from appendation to the text using local gazetteers as a result of Qing expansion of imperial territory, to a twentieth century refashioning of Li Shizhen as scientist, comic-book figure, artistic muse, and medical icon.
...MoreDescription On a work of materia medica and natural history written by Ming scholar Li Shizhen (1518-1593). Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 67/07 (2007). UMI pub. no. 3227345.
Book
Nappi, Carla Suzan;
(2009)
The Monkey and the Inkpot: Natural History and Its Transformations in Early Modern China
(/isis/citation/CBB001221362/)
Article
Nappi, Carla;
(2007)
A Bug's Life: Change and Transformation in Early Modern China
(/isis/citation/CBB000850066/)
Article
Zhang, Fang;
(2015)
Changes in and Influence of the Images in the Bencao Yuanshi
(/isis/citation/CBB543046519/)
Chapter
Georges Métailié;
(2015)
Filing or Taxonomy: The Case of Li Shizhen (1518-1593)
(/isis/citation/CBB818290976/)
Article
Andreas Janousch;
(2014)
The Censor’s Stele: Religion, Salt-Production and Labour in the Temple of the God of the Salt Lake in Southern Shanxi Province
(/isis/citation/CBB819700654/)
Book
Li Shizhen;
(2022)
Ben Cao Gang Mu, Volume IV: Marshland Herbs, Poisonous Herbs
(/isis/citation/CBB691024326/)
Book
Shizhen Li;
(2024)
Ben Cao Gang Mu, Volume VI: Vegetables, Fruits
(/isis/citation/CBB656884237/)
Book
Shizhen Li;
(2024)
Ben Cao Gang Mu, Volume VII: Woods
(/isis/citation/CBB555707040/)
Book
Zhibin Zhang;
(2014)
Dictionary of the Ben cao gang mu, Volume 1: Chinese Historical Illness Terminology
(/isis/citation/CBB400337434/)
Book
Li Shizhen;
(2022)
Ben Cao Gang Mu, Volume V: Creeping Herbs, Water Herbs, Herbs Growing on Stones, Mosses, Cereals
(/isis/citation/CBB288016743/)
Book
Li Shizhen;
(2022)
Ben Cao Gang Mu, Volume III: Mountain Herbs, Fragrant Herbs
(/isis/citation/CBB592964103/)
Book
Li Shizhen;
(2021)
Ben Cao Gang Mu, Volume VIII: Clothes, Utensils, Worms, Insects, Amphibians, Animals with Scales, Animals with Shells
(/isis/citation/CBB917758554/)
Book
Li Shizhen;
(2021)
Ben Cao Gang Mu, Volume II: Waters, Fires, Soils, Metals, Jades, Stones, Minerals, Salts
(/isis/citation/CBB812092255/)
Book
Li Shizhen;
(2021)
Ben Cao Gang Mu, Volume IX: Fowls, Domestic and Wild Animals, Human Substances
(/isis/citation/CBB662389224/)
Article
Lo, Vivienne;
Barrett, Penelope;
(2005)
Cooking Up Fine Remedies: On the Culinary Aesthetic in a Sixteenth-Century Chinese Materia Medica
(/isis/citation/CBB000773942/)
Article
Doyoung Koo;
(2020)
Processing Method & Distribution of Medicinal Plant Ginseng in Early Modern East Asia -Focusing on Ginseng as a Tribute Item of Joeseon to the Ming Dynasty
(/isis/citation/CBB709133541/)
Article
Nianzu Dai;
Xumin Zhang;
(2017)
An Experiment on Releasing Water from Water Tanks by Xu Youzhen during the Ming Dynasty
(/isis/citation/CBB953684150/)
Article
Min, Zong-dian;
(2003)
A Record of Ming-Qing Agricultural Treatises Awaiting Inquiry
(/isis/citation/CBB000600160/)
Article
Shi, Yunli;
Song, Bing;
(2006)
New Evidence Concerning Wang Yinglin's Possible Authorship of the Jingtian Gai
(/isis/citation/CBB001020737/)
Article
Wang Xiaohu;
(2013)
Governmental Monopolization and Supply of Almanacs in Ming Dynasty: Circulation and Its Financial Problem
(/isis/citation/CBB387764247/)
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