主持人:Lynn A. Struve(司徒琳)
Indiana University, Department of History
(美國印第安那大學歷史系)
摘 要
My current, principal research interest is in the dream records and dream culture of the late Ming
and the Ming-Qing transition period, from the latter half of the sixteenth through the seventeenth century
in China. The dream records that I study vary considerably with the individual authors and their particular
temperaments, beliefs, and life-situations. Collectively, they invite exploration of the following themes,
important for the proposed project: (1) The resources that intellectuals found in aspects of the religio-
spiritual creeds that were available to them, in their social class in their time; (2) the psychological weight
of analogies from history, belles-lettres, and the classics that seemed relevant to individuals’ conflicted
circumstances; (3) the rhetorical uses to which certain conceits—in my case, the dream conceit—were put
for purposes, for instance, of political criticism, self-apology, or justified escapism; (4) the dynamic between
personal guilt and self-blame, on one hand, and outrage at circumstances beyond individual control, on the
other, and how this dynamic was shaped by traditions of thought; (5) the role of family problems, tragedies,
and material considerations in how certain intellectuals responded to national crises, and how their thinking
about this factor was influenced by socio-political norms.