Counting books by the juan 卷 was one of the most fundamental practices in premodern Chinese book culture. The juan remained the standard bibliographical measure-word for over two millennia and persisted into the early-twentieth century. In this study, I explore the history of the juan and the ways in which its longevity coordinated with structural transformations in the Chinese book. Specifically, I highlight the way material and conceptual factors contributed to the sustained presence of the juan, and how the enduring juan, in turn, caused the central feature of book management to alternate between the material and the conceptual. I argue that the juan, first as a "roll," initiated a material turn, which resulted in a new way of perceiving and organizing books as material objects. It made a physical transition from the book-roll into a stack of pages in a codex. Subsequently, the juan achieved a conceptual comeback by the way it served to highlight the internal intellectual order of a book's contents.
juan, roll, codex, bibliographical measure, binding, book management, material, conceptual
Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.
