(University of Oregon, 1996-08) Duncan, William E.
The 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.
