This volume assembles thirteen essays on topics from the Spring and Autumn period down to the Northern Song, drawing on primary sources ranging from standard historiographical and philosophical classics to excavated texts, bellettristic works in various genres, anomaly accounts, and Buddhist scriptural and hagiographical traditions. As the title indicates, the unifying thread through what is in many regards a quite disparate set of essays is a shared focus on one variety or another of violation of standards of moral or proper behavior. Both in terms of the range of periods and topics and of the analytical frameworks adopted, the authors have taken their mandate to reflect on “bad behavior” in early and medieval Chinese sources in markedly divergent directions, but on the aggregate the volume provides an engaging introduction both to some relatively understudied issues as well as new perspectives on some canonical works and methodological problems.

The essays are...

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