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A Review of Classicism 163

School of New Text Confucianism in Late Imperial China (Elman, 1990), Benjamin A.
Elman has gained great renown with researchers of Qing classical studies as well
as among sinologists outside China. Classicism, the Imperial Civil Examination
System, and Cultural History: Selected Works of Benjamin A. Elman (Elman, 2010)
published in 2010 can be regarded as Elman’s summary of his own achievements.
The book not only embodies Elman’s most important academic findings in various
explorations in the field but also integrates these views in a comprehensive
framework, showing the author’s consistent problem awareness for decades.
Whether it is the textual research on the origin of philology of From Philosophy
to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China, the
consideration on the social background of “Changzhou School in the Qing
Dynasty’s Contributions to the Revival of Modern Confucian Classics” in Classi-
cism, Politics, and Kinship: the Ch’ang-chou School of New Text Confucianism in Late
Imperial China, or the later discussion on the origin of science in Science in China
(1550–1900) (Elman, 2016), the prototype or epitome can be seen in Elman’s
Selected Works. However, the volume of his Selected Works represents not simply a
collection of his various research projects, but also a unified account, in a broad
spectrum, of his humanistic concern for cultural history. Thus the title Classicism,
Civil Examinations, and Cultural History should not be read verbatim at face value,
but, more logically, as “Cultural History of Classicism and the Imperial Civil
Examination System (科举).” can be seen that his focus on classicism and the
Imperial Civil Examination System is oriented to the study of the vicissitudes of
Chinese civilization and cultural replacement in history, which Elman tries to track
down to their causes by delving into the depths of specific cases in Ming
(1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) academia.

1 The Historical Context of China

Early in a dialogue with Wang Hui (汪晖) in May 1993, Elman cast his doubts on
John K. Fairbank’s exclusive attention to socio-economic history and showed
dissatisfaction with his historical narrative approach. Instead, he embraces a
contextual mode of study that connects China’s history of thought to its contem-
porary conditions of economics, politics, and the social background of the time
(Wang & Elman, 1994). The latter approach is brilliantly illustrated in Selected
Works, for Elman rejects both the hindsight of modernism and the predominance of
a Eurocentric narrative. He attempts to return to Chinese history per se and to
decipher Chinese thought by a coherent explanation of Chinese social, academic,
and cultural history.