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Divination magie et politique dans la Chine ancienne
261 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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March 19, 2026
Finished re-reading 2026. My French is MUCH better now. Even if I did accidently buy a second copy as I forgot I had this already. I felt bad reading it and not the originals alongside though. I got to a good translation about one of the Fang Shi who it casually mentioned was trans, and now I need to go and find the original text for that!
Unfortunately my French wasn't quite good enough to properly understand a lot of this book. Part of the problem was that the author was using a form of Chinese romanisation that I wasn't familiar with so I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the Chinese was that he was talking about.
The book was looking at the role of the Fang Shi in the Han court. It was divided into three sections, a history of the "occult" or "Magic" as it was recorded in the official histories. This was an overview of occurances of prophecy, socery scares, divination etc.
The second section was a translation of the biographies of the Fang Shi from the Hou Han Shi. While I managed alright with the first section the middle section I found very difficult. Thankfully SOAS have an English translation of the Hou Han Shu and I should be able to go and read the biographies in English and then I think I will tackle it again in French.
The last section looked at the different esoteric arts. It divided them as they were divided by imperial library classification (so immortality came in the medical section). This part I found the easiest to read as I'm most familiar with the different types of divination and the paths to immortality and other things that were discussed.
The book was written originally in the 70s and as such it kinda shows. My biggest problem (besides the French) was that it stuck almost entirely to the standard histories as sources. It didn't go beyond into any of the other writings to try and explain what was actually happening beyond the standard (Confucian) interpretation of events. I'm very glad I bought it though as it's a great resource. Though I definitely need to keep studying so I'll be able to get more out of it later.
Unfortunately my French wasn't quite good enough to properly understand a lot of this book. Part of the problem was that the author was using a form of Chinese romanisation that I wasn't familiar with so I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the Chinese was that he was talking about.
The book was looking at the role of the Fang Shi in the Han court. It was divided into three sections, a history of the "occult" or "Magic" as it was recorded in the official histories. This was an overview of occurances of prophecy, socery scares, divination etc.
The second section was a translation of the biographies of the Fang Shi from the Hou Han Shi. While I managed alright with the first section the middle section I found very difficult. Thankfully SOAS have an English translation of the Hou Han Shu and I should be able to go and read the biographies in English and then I think I will tackle it again in French.
The last section looked at the different esoteric arts. It divided them as they were divided by imperial library classification (so immortality came in the medical section). This part I found the easiest to read as I'm most familiar with the different types of divination and the paths to immortality and other things that were discussed.
The book was written originally in the 70s and as such it kinda shows. My biggest problem (besides the French) was that it stuck almost entirely to the standard histories as sources. It didn't go beyond into any of the other writings to try and explain what was actually happening beyond the standard (Confucian) interpretation of events. I'm very glad I bought it though as it's a great resource. Though I definitely need to keep studying so I'll be able to get more out of it later.
Displaying 1 of 1 review