Steven Sangren, Filiality, and the Holy Grail of Chinese Anthropology

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Lupke, Christopher

• This review article provides an extended analysis of P. Steven Sangren's book Filial Obsessions: Chinese Patriliny and Its Discontents (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), an extended reinterpretation of the Chinese notion of filiality and concurrent analysis of the Ming dynasty novel Fengshen Yanyi (Investiture of the Gods) from an anthropological perspective. Sangren's challenging book is both highly theoretical and empirically detailed as it serves to link late imperial Chinese attitudes toward the cardinal value of filiality, the notion of upheaval or subversion, and the dynamics of a creative work of fiction.

• Date created

  2016-10-01

• Subjects / Keywords

  • filiality, Nezha, Investiture of the Gods, Fengshen Yanyi, Ming dynasty, Steven Sangren, anthropology, narrative, desire,
  • CT Hsia, religion, Mark Meulenbeld
  • , Meir Shahar,
  • ancestor worship, gender
  • Ming dynasty
  • China

• Type of Item

  Review

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-x82q-cb78

• License

  Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International