Bibliographical Essay

Although historians have traditionally downplayed the militaristic side of Chinese society, this topic is beginning to gain more attention. Nicola Di Cosmo (ed.), Military Culture in Imperial China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011) includes articles exploring the ambiguous attitudes that Chinese have held towards warfare, presenting an excellent starting point for understanding this complex subject.

Violence within the home shaped Chinese family life in fundamental ways. However, not all violence was directed by men towards women. Yenna Wu, ‘The Inversion of Marital Hierarchy: Shrewish Wives and Hen-Pecked Husbands in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Literature', Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 48.2 (1988), 363-82, explores the common trope of violent women terrorising submissive husbands. A large body of research studies why women mutilated themselves or committed suicide in the name of virtue, as represented by the insightful article by Katherine Carlitz, ‘The Daughter, the Singing-Girl, and the Seduction of Suicide', Nan Nu: Men, Women and Gender in Early and Imperial China 3.1 (2001), 22-46. Key Ray Chong, Cannibalism in China (Wakefield: Longwood Academic, 1990) discusses unique Chinese customs of self-mutilation and cannibalism in the name of filial virtue.

Although Chinese literature sometimes featured violence, some genres had particularly violent contents. Robert Ford Campany, Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992) describes the evolution of narratives about extraordinary occurrences, which often included violent actions. As literature matured, authors portrayed violence in increasingly sophisticated ways. Luo Guanzhong, Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel, trans. Moss Roberts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) presents a translation of the most famous Chinese novel about war, offering profound meditations on the nature and meanings of violence. A vast scholarly literature has analysed every aspect of this famous work, and many researchers have explored the ways it portrayals violence, as exemplified by Peter R. Moody, Jr. ‘The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Popular Chinese Political Thought', Review of Politics 37.2 (1975), 175-99.

Research into intellectual and cultural history provides the background information necessary to appreciate the highly refined intellectual and ethical systems that informed views of violence. Benjamin I. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1985) presents a superb overview of the most important ideas that stimulated Chinese thinkers. Although little attention has been given to violence in Chinese art, Oliver Moore. ‘Violence Un-scrolled: Cultic and Ritual Emphases in Painting Guan Yu', Arts Asiatiques 58 (2003), 86-97, describes the ways that artists portrayed Guan Yu, a hero who became euhemerised as the god of war.