Music, Cosmology, and the Politics of Harmony in Early China

“Brindley’s study of music in early China makes an important contribution to our understanding of this highly consequential art form … By not limiting its analysis to a specific text or time, the book explores broad-ranging connections that might otherwise remain obscure if limited by now obsolete divisions such as Confucianism or Daoism.” — Journal of Chinese Religions

“Taking full advantage of the plethora of newly excavated manuscripts, this book is a welcome addition to the study of early Chinese intellectual and cultural history … [the book] is an important study that breaks new ground in a regrettably understudied area of Chinese thought.” — Journal of Asian Studies

“This is an enormous contribution to the field in terms of addressing some early conceptions of music and its social, cultural, and political role in the developing political and cosmic system based on correlative thinking, or as the author puts it, a ‘cosmology of mystical resonance.’” — Joanne D. Birdwhistell, author of Mencius and Masculinities: Dynamics of Power, Morality, and Maternal Thinking

Erica Fox Brindley is Associate Professor of History, Asian Studies, and Religious Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. She is the author of Individualism in Early China: Human Agency and the Self in Thought and Politics.