The Prefatory Self: Images of the Author in Traditional Chinese Drama

T oung Pao ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 107 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 95-132
Author(s):  
Guojun Wang
Keyword(s):  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Chinese Opera ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Book Culture

Abstract This article considers representations of Chinese opera authors in the prefatory space of their theatrical works. Despite the longstanding tradition of portraiture and drama production in premodern China, existing materials suggest that pictorial depictions of the authors started to appear in play scripts primarily during the Qing dynasty. How are those images related to theatrical works and their authors? Instead of treating authorship as a type of ownership, this article studies the multifaceted nature of authorial images by examining the depiction of the authors’ hairstyles and clothing alongside other content in the front matter of those plays. Situating the phenomenon within the histories of Chinese drama, clothing, and book culture, this article argues that authors increasingly appeared in late imperial Chinese drama in their social roles, moving from the prefatory space to the drama script proper.

The Dragon Robe as the Professional Dress of the Qing Dynasty Scholar-Official (The Náprstek Museum Collection)

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
Helena Heroldová
Keyword(s):  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
Museum Collection ◽  
Religious Symbols ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
High Homogeneity

Dragon robes were worn by scholar – officials who were members of bureacracy of the Qing dynasty in China (1644–1911). The cut and design of the robes were uniform, but the embellishment and motifs including religious symbols were individual and personal. Dragon robes as a garment with high homogeneity and visibility is compared to the “organisational dress” worn by members of contemporary Western organisations. The meaning of both garments is found to be similar, especially as they convey social roles within the organisation and society.

Marginalia Transcription and Scholarly Culture in the Qing Dynasty

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 399-421
Author(s):  
Wei Yinzong
Keyword(s):  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Transmission Of Information ◽  
Scholarly Practice ◽  
Reading Culture ◽  
Efficient Transmission ◽  
Book Culture

Abstract In the Qing, transcription of marginalia became common scholarly practice, involving a number of different people who created a new reading culture. This article follows the marginalia trail of scholar and calligrapher He Zhuo 何焯 through various transcribers and others involved in the process: He's disciples, later generations of scholars, bibliophiles, calligraphers, and booksellers. Connected through He's and others' marginalia across time and space, these transcribers established a network for the efficient transmission of information, knowledge, and thought. Transcription of such marginalia created a unique book culture that shaped scholarship, thought, and society in the Qing and produced critical texts that are still read today.

An object-oriented study on Yongwu shi: poetry on eyeglasses in the Qing dynasty

2016 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 375-397
Author(s):  
Zinan Yan
Keyword(s):  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Object Identity ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
General Development ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Imperial Period

AbstractThis paper suggests a different approach in the study of Qing dynasty yongwu poetry, which is to analyse the cultural significance of the object in this literary subgenre instead of its lyrical essence. Taking eyeglasses as an example, this paper surveys the general development of imported and domestic eyeglasses in China from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and presents various literary interpretations assigned to this object through time. It further discusses Western and Chinese materiality, the economy and scholars' lives, political and social justification, as well as literary complexity and object identity, which are vital to the development of poetry on eyeglasses in the late imperial period.

scholarly journals Rethinking Gender and Female Laity in Late Imperial Chinese Pure Land Buddhist Biographies

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 705
Author(s):  
Xing Wang
Keyword(s):  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
Pure Land ◽  
Female Agency ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Late Ming ◽  
Lay Women ◽  
Confucian Scholar ◽  
Confucian Teachings

This paper explores how lay female believers are depicted in the Chinese monastic Pure Land Buddhist texts and how a particular late-imperial Chinese Buddhist biography collection betrayed the previously existing narrative of female laity. Moreover, I wish to show that there had existed a long-lasting and persistent non-binary narrative of lay women in Chinese Pure Land biographies admiring female agency, in which female Pure Land practitioners are depicted as equally accomplished to male ones. Such a narrative betrays the medieval monastic elitist discourse of seeing women as naturally corrupted. This narrative is best manifested in the late Ming monk master Yunqi Zhuhong’s collection, who celebrated lay female practitioners’ religious achievement as comparable to men. This tradition is discontinued in the Confucian scholar Peng Shaosheng’s collection of lay female Buddhist biographies in the Qing dynasty, however, in which Peng depicts women as submissive and inferior to males. This transition—from using the stories of eminent lay female Buddhists to challenge Confucian teachings to positioning lay females under Confucian disciplines—exhibits Peng Shaosheng’s own invention, rather than a transmission of the inherited formulaic narration of lay female believers, as he claimed.

Grammatical Descriptions in Manchu Grammar Books from the Qing Dynasty

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-55
Author(s):  
Takashi Takekoshi
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Qing Dynasty ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Chinese Scholars ◽  
High Degree ◽  
The 19Th Century

In this paper, we analyse features of the grammatical descriptions in Manchu grammar books from the Qing Dynasty. Manchu grammar books exemplify how Chinese scholars gave Chinese names to grammatical concepts in Manchu such as case, conjugation, and derivation which exist in agglutinating languages but not in isolating languages. A thorough examination reveals that Chinese scholarly understanding of Manchu grammar at the time had attained a high degree of sophistication. We conclude that the reason they did not apply modern grammatical concepts until the end of the 19th century was not a lack of ability but because the object of their grammatical descriptions was Chinese, a typical isolating language.

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