Matching Items (6)
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- All Subjects: Daoism
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- All Subjects: Violence in literature
- Creators: West, Stephen H.
- Status: Published
Description
Wu Yun (d. 778) was prominent poet at the Tang court. His biography of the Daoist ritualist Lu Xiujing (406-77) can be read on several levels. It functions as a source of information on Lu's life and works, but a reading focused on this alone is insufficient. Conventions of Chinese biography dictate the text is read not just with an eye towards who Lu "really was," but also how he functions as a character fashioned by an author for certain purposes. With this in mind, the reader can learn not just about Lu, but about the audience of the text and the aims of its author. Lu functioned as a model for later Daoist masters and as an exhortation to proper conduct towards them on the part of rulers and elites. Finally, with reference to the work of Michel Foucault and scholars of collective memory, this work can be read as a window onto the world of discourse in early medieval China.
ContributorsSwanger, Timothy (Author) / Bokenkamp, Stephen R. (Thesis advisor) / Aguilera, Miguel A. (Committee member) / West, Stephen H. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
ABSTRACT This thesis aims to demonstrate the validity of political violence in contemporary Chicano and Peruvian American narratives as a reflection of the sociopolitical situation of immigrants and their descendants in the United States (U.S.). The thesis explores the various ways in which contemporary Chicano and Peruvian American narratives present the political violence in the U.S. towards Mexican and Peruvian immigrants and Chicanos and Peruvian Americans examining the intersections that exist between the resistance and violence discourses and its sociopolitical consequences. Although the topic of political violence has been previously studied in U.S. and Latin American narratives throughout its history, its analysis has been insufficiently explored as far as contemporary narratives of the XXI century are concerned. With this in mind, two texts will be used to study this discourse of violence in Chicano and Peruvian American literature: Alejandro Morales' "Pequeña nación" (2005) and Daniel Alarcón's "Guerra en la penumbra" (2005). The thesis examines the immigrant as a center of discourse exploring the conflict between them and the institutions or groups in power that instigate this political violence. The first chapter covers the socio historical background regarding Mexican and Peruvian migration flows to the United States in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The second chapter introduces "The Triangle of Violence" proposed by Norwegian mathematician and sociologist Johan Galtung as the basis for the theoretical framework and approach of this analysis. Chapter three analyzes the Chicano short story "Pequeña nación" by Alejandro Morales. The analysis of the Peruvian American short story "Guerra en la penumbra" by Daniel Alarcón follows in chapter four. The conclusion emphasizes the problem of political violence experienced by immigrants in the U.S. in contemporary Chicano and Peruvian American narratives and possible solutions contained therein, protesting a problem that can hinder immigration policy reforms and the defense of human rights.
ContributorsSifuentes, Ana (Author) / Rosales, Jesus (Thesis advisor) / García-Fernández, Carlos J. (Thesis advisor) / Alarcon, Justo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
In the midst of historical ruptures and transfiguration caused by a globalization that has restructured new realities marked by violence, Central American and Chicanos realities have come into contact in a global space such the United States. Thus, the interdependence between these two cultures is so close that the literary influences are unavoidable. We argue that there is an asymmetrical relationship in the narrative of globalization, which sets new unpublished orders and generates perceptions of reality. The ideological dimensions of globalization that have caused systemic violence can be traced through military interventions and economic ventures. Thus, the subject of our research is assumed as a literary whole within certain social facts, i.e., as a symbolic aspect of the processes of violence within a culture undermined by globalization. Hence, in using theory of violence by Slavoj Ziek and theory of globalization by Manuel Castells, Tony Shirato, Jenn Webb, James Petra, and Henry Veltmeyer, we explore the narrative and criticism of U.S-Central Americans and Chicano in order to expose the forces of systemic violence that globalization produces. Our results show that, historically, globalization has formulated epistemologies via violence for Chicanos and U.S-Central Americans; such violence marks both groups, allowing for solidarity, through discursive practices of resistance, to take place in the textual space as well as in the real world. Such solidarity disrupts the textual borders, creating a dialogue of mutual understanding.
ContributorsEscobar, Mario A (Author) / Hernández-G, Manuel De Jesús (Thesis advisor) / Rosales, Jesus (Thesis advisor) / Menjivar, Cecilia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Yuan Mei 袁枚 (1716-97) is often thought of as a rebellious figure within the eighteenth-century intellectual and literary landscape. His perceived rejection of nearly all aspects of Confucian values was so extreme that he was even dubbed a "sinner against the teachings of Confucius." This thesis examines six stories within Yuan Mei's Zi buyu 子不語 (What Confucius Did Not Talk About) and, through close reading, shows how Yuan Mei utilizes each foreign group's physical traits and their ability to verbally and/or ethically communicate with the Chinese protagonist, in order to reflect their adherence to Confucian values and acceptance of Chinese imperial authority to arrange them along a spectrum of humanness that reflects the Chinese-foreign distinction. Furthermore, by examining each story in their historical and literary contexts, it is discovered that nearly every foreign group portrayed in Zi buyu is based on historical groups that actually existed on the periphery of the Qing empire, and that the different degrees of foreignness of each subject reflect each historical foreign group's acquiescence to or rebellion against the imperial authority of the Qing empire. Contrary to commonly held opinions, Yuan Mei's negotiation of foreignness demonstrates his own deep subscription to Confucian ethics and adherence to imperial order.
ContributorsCampos, Miles (Author) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Thesis advisor) / Oh, Young Kyun (Committee member) / West, Stephen H. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This dissertation is a study and translation of the Hereditary Household of the Han Celestial Master (Han tianshi shijia 漢天師世家), a hagiographical account of successive generations of the Zhang family patriarchs of Celestial Masters Daoism (Tianshi dao 天師道) at Dragon and Tiger Mountain (Longhu shan 龍虎山) in Jiangxi province that was compiled in stages between the late fourteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Zhang family emerged in the late Tang or early Five dynasties period and rose to great prominence and power through the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties on the basis of the claim of direct and unbroken lineal descent from Zhang Daoling 張道陵 the ancestral Celestial Master whose covenant with the deified Laozi in 142 C.E. is a founding event of the Daoist religion. In this study I trace the lineal history of the Zhang family as presented in the Hereditary Household in chronological parallel to contrasting narratives found in official histories, epigraphy, and the literary record. This approach affords insight into the polemical nature of the text as an assertion of legitimacy and allows for a demonstration of how the work represents an attempt to create in writing an idealized past in order to win prestige in the present. It also affords the opportunity to scour the historical record in an attempt to ascertain a plausible timeframe for the origin of the movement and to explore the relationship of the Hereditary Household to earlier hagiographic works that may have informed it. This study also contextualizes the Hereditary Household in the post-Tang religious climate of China. In that period the establishment of lineal authenticity and institutional charisma through narratives of descent became a widespread tool of legitimation employed by Buddhists, Daoists, and Confucians in hopes of obtaining imperial recognition and patronage.
ContributorsAmato, Paul (Author) / Bokenkamp, Stephen R (Thesis advisor) / Chen, Huaiyu (Committee member) / Feldhaus, Anne (Committee member) / West, Stephen H. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
During the twelfth century, three new schools of Daoism were founded in North China: Quanzhen (Complete Perfection), Taiyi (Supreme Unity), and Dadao (Great Way). While Quanzhen has received much scholarly attention, the others have been largely ignored. By focusing on just one school--Dadao--as in depth as possible and within the historical context, I hope to elucidate the flourishing state of Daoism in North China during the twelfth through fourteenth centuries beyond just the activity of the Quanzhen school. To that end, I have amassed sixteen inscriptions and records, as well as reconstructed one inscription previously incomplete, and added them to the eleven inscriptions and records published in the Daojia jinshi lüe and the three pieces of Yuan-dynasty poetry and prose contained in the Nan Song chu Hebei xin Daojiao kao. This has doubled the available source material. Most of these have been previously published individually, but have never been studied in conjunction with the other known Dadao texts. The result is the most comprehensive study of the school in over seventy-five years, in which I also present a new understanding of the school’s founder, how the lineages developed, and the school’s ultimate fate. The portrait of the school which emerges from this dissertation challenges the notion that Dadao was nothing more than a minor variation of the Quanzhen school or is otherwise unworthy of scholarly attention.
ContributorsBussio, Jennifer J (Author) / Bokenkamp, Stephen R (Thesis advisor) / Tillman, Hoyt C (Committee member) / West, Stephen H. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017