Duncan, William E.2018-05-032018-05-031996-08https://hdl.handle.net/1794/23236111 pagesThe Zuozhuan 评论 (Zuo Commentaries); a narrative history of China's Spring and Autumn period (722-479 BCE), has been included among the thirteen classics of Confucianism since the Tang dynasty. Yet its pages contain numerous references to Shang and early Zhou divination practices. It seems paradoxical that a text identified with Confucian humanism would be full of references to the supernatural. I suggest that the Zuozhuan builds upon the foundations of the authority of Shang and Zhou ritual to establish the authority of Confucian doctrine. This phenomenon has been mentioned by other scholars, though no study has addressed this directly. It is the goal of this thesis to use passages in the Zuozhuan to demonstrate how authority moved from an external source to an internal source during the Eastern Zhou and to show that Zuozhuan makes use of something that Lakoff and Johnson have called idealized cognitive models.enCreative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-USZuo CommentariesZuozhuanConfucian doctrineConfucian humanismSpring and Autumn Annals of Mister ZuoSpring and Autumn PeriodAuthority in the ZuozhuanThesis / Dissertation