China was the most advanced country in the world when Huizong ascended the throne in 1100 CE. In his eventful twenty-six year reign, the artistically-gifted emperor guided the Song Dynasty toward cultural greatness. Yet Huizong would be known to posterity as a political failure who lost the throne to Jurchen invaders and died their prisoner. The first comprehensive English-language biography of this important monarch, Emperor Huizong is a nuanced portrait that corrects the prevailing view of Huizong as decadent and negligent. Patricia Ebrey recasts him as a ruler genuinely ambitious—if too much so—in pursuing glory for his flourishing realm.
After a rocky start trying to overcome political animosities at court, Huizong turned his attention to the good he could do. He greatly expanded the court’s charitable ventures, founding schools, hospitals, orphanages, and paupers’ cemeteries. An accomplished artist, he surrounded himself with outstanding poets, painters, and musicians and built palaces, temples, and gardens of unsurpassed splendor. What is often overlooked, Ebrey points out, is the importance of religious Daoism in Huizong’s understanding of his role. He treated Daoist spiritual masters with great deference, wrote scriptural commentaries, and urged his subjects to adopt his beliefs and practices. This devotion to the Daoist vision of sacred kingship eventually alienated the Confucian mainstream and compromised his ability to govern.
Readers will welcome this lively biography, which adds new dimensions to our understanding of a passionate and paradoxical ruler who, so many centuries later, continues to inspire both admiration and disapproval.
Patricia Buckley Ebrey is Professor of History and Chinese Studies at the University of Washington.
1、作者对本书的立意很好,用一个不同视角,站在宋徽宗所处于的历史局限性的角度来看问题很有新意。对历史选材也很有考究和谨慎。以往史学界一味的批评,有其特有目的,比如提醒当下的统治者,往往要找一个历史上的人物作为用来惊醒的工具。其次,跳出历史局限性来评价人物,往...
评分书是好书,之前看方诚峰老师的《北宋晚期的政治体制与政治文化》时,就发现引用了《宋徽宗》的英文版,从引用上来看是本好书,方评价也高。但刚买上来,粗略地看了一下,因为最近看了宋朝祭祀的问题,翻到景灵宫,“真宗发现宋朝的创始人是玉皇大帝/黄帝的后裔,便将这两位尊为...
评分 评分对于中国的古代帝王,传统的官方话语中单独有着自己独特的一套评价准则,比如皇帝若是每天早起晚归宵衣旰食,勤俭克己,哪怕他只是中人之资,这样我们也会认为他是一位好皇帝了;而对于本书的主人公,却不幸地落入万劫不复之地,后世帝王教育里,他成为了似乎必须提及的反例。 ...
这位太太我喜欢的!
评分三星書, 一星給敍事風格。以歷史學家來說,文筆算很好了。
评分#要看文笔好找史景迁卜正民这俩写小说的啊(嘲讽脸)
评分三星書, 一星給敍事風格。以歷史學家來說,文筆算很好了。
评分立体全面地回顾了徽宗的一生,从浮华到潦倒,让人无限唏嘘。最具可读性的在我看来是每章最后作者的小问题和自问自答,以及最后对全书史料选择的说明。
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