Publishing And Communication Of Morality Books In The Qing Dynasty

Abstract:From the 1920s, morality books attract more and more scholars'attention. They researched from views of the history of thought, religion, society, and so on. So much works with profound influence have been written, but the research on morality books in the Qing dynasty from the perspective of the publishing is infrequent until now. So on the base of compiling the information of more than seven hundred morality books, I tried to use the method of philology and cultural communication to do the primary research on the printing and communication of morality books. Firstly, I sorted data of morality books and divided them into eleven kinds. Then I also concluded the different characters of them according to the way of compilation and the content and I brought forward the conclusion that the development of morality books'diversification has been the general trend in the Qing Dynasty. Then I turned my eyes on the publishing of morality books through the four main printing systems, the charity associations and charity halls. In this part I particularly emphasized on the commercial publishing houses and analyzed them separately in the different book carving centers, for example Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, Guangzhou, Nanjing etc. And then on the background of the aggrandizement of the traffic net and the development of the post in Qing Dynasty, I pointed out that the authors and the booksellers spared no pains to advise the people to read and buy morality books.All kinds of morality books had broken the limit of region and circulated in many different areas. The morality books also gave many useful advices to the people of different careers to distribute morality books according to the different situations. And I also tried to analyze and reorganize different kinds of advices. In the last part I choose three special groups and try to find how morality books establish the relationship with their lives. The experience of reading morality books in the early time always influenced the writing and the female also promoted the writing and printing of morality books directly or indirectly. In the end I also concern one of the influences of morality books in the Qing Dynasty, which is the relationship between morality books and charity. The thought persuading people to do good and comeuppance in the morality books, and the summary of the constructing the charity organization work promoted the development of the charity activities in Qing Dynasty. The communication of morality books played an important role on civil-moral education and keeping social stability.