Five dynasties and ten kingdoms

Abstract

The period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (907 to 960 BCE) has long been treated as an anomaly in the history of China, an age of great disunity between the empires of the Tang and Song dynasties. Breaking with previous scholarship on China's middle period, this book presents individual studies that focus on the art, culture, and politics of the interregnum, challenging not only the underlying assumptions about the unitary nature of dynastic culture, but also its value as a category of historical analysis. Understanding these decades as a time of important transition, in which the incipient cultural shifts of the mature Tang dynasty turned into the foundations of Song society, this volume also highlights the complex narrative processes that gave birth to Song culture.