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Using history to challenge Communist Party rule. Sparks: China's Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future describes how some of China's best-known writers, filmmakers, and artists have overcome crackdowns and censorship to forge a nationwide movement that challenges the Communist Party on its most hallowed ground: its control of history.The past is a battleground in many countries, but in China it is crucial to political power. In traditional China, dynasties rewrote history to justify their rule by proving that their predecessors were unworthy of holding power. Marxism gave this a modern gloss, describing history as an unstoppable force heading toward Communism's triumph. The Chinese Communist Party builds on these ideas to whitewash its misdeeds and glorify its rule. Indeed, one of Xi Jinping's signature policies is the control of history, which he equates with the party's survival. But in recent years, a network of independent writers, artists, and filmmakers have begun challenging this state-led disremembering. Using digital technologies to bypass China's legendary surveillance state, their samizdat journals, guerilla media posts, and underground films document a regular pattern of disasters: from famines and purges of years past to ethnic clashes and virus outbreaks of the present--powerful and inspiring accounts that have underpinned recent protests in China against Xi Jinping's strongman rule.Based on years of first-hand research in Xi Jinping's China, Sparks challenges stereotypes of a China where the state has quashed all free thought, revealing instead a country engaged in one of humanity's great struggles of memory against forgetting--a battle that will shape the China that emerges in the mid-21st century.

Historians --- Dissenters --- Collective memory --- China --- Historiography --- Political aspects.

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Studies of the vernacular in the period 1300-1550 have tended to focus exclusively upon language, to the exception of the wider vernacular culture within which this was located. The essays in this collection draw upon a wide range of source material, including buildings, devotional and educational literature, and parliamentary and civic records, in order to expand and elaborate our idea of the vernacular. Each contributor addresses central ideas about the nature and identity of the vernacular and how we appraise it, involving questions about nationhood, popularity, the commonalty, and the conflict and conjunction of the vernacular with the non-vernacular. These notions of vernacularity are situated within studies of reading practices, heresy, translation, gentry identity, seditious speech, and language politics. By considering the nature of vernacularity, these essays explore whether it is possible to perceive a common theory of vernacular use and practice at this time.

English language --- Book history --- Historical linguistics --- Old English literature --- anno 1400-1499 --- anno 1300-1399 --- anno 1500-1599 --- Language and culture --- Christian literature, English (Middle) --- English literature --- Books and reading --- Anglais (Langue) --- Langage et culture --- Littérature chrétienne anglaise (moyen anglais) --- Littérature anglaise --- Livres et lecture --- History --- Histoire --- Criticism, Textual --- 091 =20 --- 091 =916.6 --- Handschriftenkunde. Handschriftencatalogi--Engels --- Handschriftenkunde. Handschriftencatalogi--Welsh --- English --- Languages & Literatures --- English Language --- Criticism, Textual. --- History. --- 091 =916.6 Handschriftenkunde. Handschriftencatalogi--Welsh --- 091 =20 Handschriftenkunde. Handschriftencatalogi--Engels --- Littérature chrétienne anglaise (moyen anglais) --- Littérature anglaise --- Culture and language --- Culture --- Germanic languages --- Christian literature, English --- Christian literature, Middle English --- English Christian literature, Middle --- Middle English Christian literature --- Appraisal of books --- Books --- Choice of books --- Evaluation of literature --- Literature --- Reading, Choice of --- Reading and books --- Reading habits --- Reading public --- Reading --- Reading interests --- Reading promotion --- Appraisal --- Evaluation --- Middle English, 1100-1500 --- England --- To 1500 --- Wales --- Christian literature [English ] (Middle) --- Criticism [Textual ] --- English language - Middle English, 1100-1500 - History --- Language and culture - England - History - To 1500 --- Language and culture - Wales - History - To 1500 --- Christian literature, English (Middle) - Criticism, Textual --- English literature - Middle English, 1100-1500 - Criticism, Textual --- Books and reading - England - History - To 1500 --- Books and reading - Wales - History - To 1500