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- All Subjects: Asian Literature
- All Subjects: Fine Arts
- Genre: Academic theses
- Genre: Masters Thesis
- Creators: Brown, Claudia
nation. San Franciscan Helen Hyde (1868-1919) joined the throng in 1899. Unlike many
of her predecessors, however, she went as a single woman and was so taken with Japan
she made it her home over the span of fourteen years. While a number of cursory studies
have been written on Helen Hyde and her work, a wide range of questions have been left
unanswered. Issues regarding her specific training, her printmaking techniques and the
marketing of her art have been touched on, but never delved into. This dissertation will
explore those issues. Helen Hyde's success as a printmaker stemmed from her intense
artistic training, experimental techniques, artistic and social connections and diligence in
self-promotion and marketing as well as a Western audience hungry for "Old Japan," and
its imagined quaintness. Hyde's choice to live and work in Japan gave her access to
models and firsthand subject matter which helped her audience feel like they were getting
a slice of Japan, translated for them by a Western artist. This dissertation provides an in
depth bibliography including hundreds of primary newspaper articles about Hyde who
was lauded for her unique style. It also expands and corrects the listing of her printed
works and examines the working style of an American working in a Japanese system with
Japanese subjects for a primarily American audience. It also provides a listing of known
exhibitions of Hyde's works and a listing of stamps and markings she used on her prints.
Based on literary works produced by the multiethnic literati of the Jin dynasty (1115–1234), this dissertation examines Chinese conceptions of the Steppe world in the early years of the Mongol era (1206–1260). As I show, late Jin literati, who took arduous journeys in the Eurasian Steppes, initiated transcultural communications between the Chinese and Steppe worlds. Their writings encouraged more Chinese literati to reach out to the Mongols and hence facilitated the spread of the ideal Confucian-style governance to the Mongol empire. In general, I follow the approach of New Historicism in analyzing poetic works. Even though the Mongol conquest of China damaged many northern literary texts, materials surviving from the thirteenth century still feature a great diversity. I brought historical records and inscriptions on stela to study the social conditions under which these literary works were produced. This dissertation aims to contribute a new voice to the ongoing effort to modify the traditional linear understanding of the development of Chinese literary tradition.
This dissertation explores the representation of female imagery associated with the Yuan pleasure quarters by examining a reservoir of Yuan sanqu. Previous scholarship has studied this topic using either historical material or zaju drama texts but has more or less ignored the voluminous corpus of sanqu. Furthermore, scholarly inquiries of Yuan sanqu either have emphasized its development from the Song ci lyrical tradition or its colloquial features. In consequence, the complexity of sanqu as an independent literary genre has been neglected. Using the representation of female imagery of the pleasure quarters in Yuan sanqu as an entry point, on one hand, this dissertation examines the dynamics of this urban and textual space. On the other, it focuses on rarely-studied sanqu pieces and analyzes them in a new light. The pleasure quarters and the production of Yuan sanqu are closely related to each other. In particular, the pleasure quarters are both revealed through the creative process of sanqu and have established sanqu as a distinctive aesthetic experience. The first chapter will focus on women of the pleasure quarters from the perspective of their hierarchical distinctions in terms of beauty, performative nature, and desirability as companions. Chapter two discusses the representation of women of the pleasure quarters in Yuan sanqu. Distinctive from the exclusive focus on privileged outstanding courtesans in poetic and lyrical tradition, Yuan sanqu depicted women from different registers of pleasure quarters. Thus, the genre formulated a diverse picture of images, rhetoric, and modalities. Chapter three examines a major literary tradition mainly sustained by the Yuan sanqu tradition, which is the story of Shuang Jian and Su Xiaoqing. As one of the most important and widespread literary traditions at play during the Yuan, Yuan sanqu writers’ representation of this pleasure-quarters-based story manifests the fulness and diversity of Yuan sanqu as a distinctive literary genre. In the epilogue, I focus on a zaju script by Ma Zhiyuan and an anonymous song suite in relation to this story. By so doing, I intend to show how Yuan qu lyrics incorporated the poetic, lyrical, and dramatic traditions in a somewhat promiscuous way.