Modern Chinese Religion I: Song-Liao-Jin-Yuan (960–1368 AD) ed. by John Lagerwey and Pierre Marsone (review)

Abstract

The writing of a survey text of the arts produced during a single Chinese dynasty is no easy feat, especially when the body of material to be surveyed—as in the case of the Yuan dynasty—is shaped by artistic traditions drawn from throughout the known world during the century it examines. Measured against the scale of the endeavor, the concerns raised above are small; yet these concerns are representative of, rather than exceptional to, the attention paid to detail in the text, the strength of which is found in its Big Picture. Craig Clunas’s Empire of Great Brightness: Visual and Material Cultures of Ming China, 1368–1644, succeeded in surveying the arts of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) in part because Clunas has written more on the arts of the Ming dynasty than any other living author, and in part because the nativist focus of the Ming dynasty limited the geographical scope of its cultural hinterland.28 In contrast, The Mongol Century is a book that might best have been written by a team of scholars, ideally specialists in the various languages, cultures, and art histories that shaped the Sino-Mongol state, as well as those, cited and uncited in The Mongol Century, whose work collectively has transformed the field in the past twenty years. But to give credit where credit is due, this review is not the first to voice that opinion.29