Matching Items (5)
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- All Subjects: Asian studies
- Creators: West, Stephen
Description
My study centers on the novel Katakiuchi Kidan Jiraiya Monogatari (1806-1807) by Kanwatei Onitake (1760-1818). Jiraiya Monogatari was the first literary reading book to be adapted for the kabuki stage. It was also the prototype on which Mizugaki Egao, Kawatake Mokuami, Makino Shouzou; and others based their bound picture books, kabuki, and films. The tale is composed of two revenge incidents, both of which have the same structural framework and are didactic in tone. In my study, I analyze the two revenge incidents by examining their narrative structures. Each incident has the same three-act structure: setup, confrontation, and resolution. The setup of each revenge incident introduces the main characters and their relationships and establishes the dramatic vehicle, which is an unexpected incident that sets the revenge in motion. The confrontation contains myriad non-linear inserts, plot twists, and reversals of fortune, all of which have the effect of a narrative delay. This prolongation of the outcome of a simple revenge plot allows readers the necessary space in which they can form their own judgments regarding good and evil and consider karmic cause and effect. The resolution, including the climax as well as the ending of the revenge, demonstrates the didactic notion of punishing evil and karmic effect. The two revenge incidents embody two rules, kanzen chouaku and inga, which together highlight the didacticism of Jiraiya monogatari.
ContributorsZhang, Jin (Author) / Creamer, John (Thesis advisor) / West, Stephen (Committee member) / Chambers, Anthony (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This dissertation focuses on the corpus of Zang Maoxun’s literary creations in The Collection from the Fubao Hall and investigates his involvement in the cultural activities of the Jinling Poetry Society. Unearthing how Zang and this Society, as self and community, played an instrumental role in creating and sustaining a network of dramatists and drama critics in the Jiangnan region, a careful review of his poems and prose shows the extent to which text preparation, commentary, and printing were at the center of his communications with his social circle. Moreover, this dissertation unpacks Zang’s contribution to the promotion of dramatic texts through a thorough examination of his ardent editorial work in revising Tang Xianzu’s The Four Dream Plays from the Jade Tea Hall, the epitome of the southern musical drama. By using Zang’s 1618 Diaochong guan edition of his adaptations as a focal point, this dissertation compares it with three late Ming editions of Tang’s plays printed in the dual colors of red-and-black ink. In light of their innovative editorial designs, and the varying evaluations formed in their pages about Zang’s editorial work, this dissertation reveals the importance of Zang’s adaptations in the history of The Four Dream Plays’ textual transmission, as well as the interplay between the tradition of drama criticism and the new technology of multicolor printing and consequent innovation in editorial principles.
ContributorsZhang, Rachel Junlei (Author) / West, Stephen (Thesis advisor) / Oh, Young (Committee member) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Religions, following Max Müller, have often been seen by scholars in religious studies as uniform collections of beliefs and practices encoded in stable “sacred books” that direct the conduct of religious actors. These texts were the chief focus of academic students of religion through much of the 20th century, and this approach remains strong in the 21st. However, a growing chorus of dissidents has begun to focus on the lived experience of practitioners and the material objects that structure that experience, and some textual scholars have begun extending this materialist framework to the study of texts. This dissertation is a contribution in that vein from the field of Daoist studies. Now split between two separate texts, the Most High Scripture of the Rectifying Methods of the Three Heavens began as a 4th-century collection of apocalyptic predictions and apotropaic devices designed to deliver a select group of Chinese literati to the heavens of Highest Clarity. Later editors during the early medieval period (ca. 220-589 CE) took one of two paths: for their own reasons, they altered the Rectifying Methods to emphasize either the world’s end or its continuation. Detailed study of these alterations and their contexts shows how individuals and groups used and modified the Rectifying Methods in in ways that challenge the conventional relationship between religious text and religious actor.
ContributorsSwanger, Timothy Charles (Author) / Bokenkamp, Stephen R (Thesis advisor) / Campany, Robert (Committee member) / Chen, Huaiyu (Committee member) / Oh, Young (Committee member) / West, Stephen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This dissertation discusses how Confucianism was invented as the basis for culturalidentity of East Asia and how the “Confucian” Classics were circulated and translated in and beyond China proper. Penetrating the compelling forces behind four well-known and widely used texts—the Shijing, the Hanshu, the Shuowen jiezi, and the Erya—in relation to the power dynamics and negotiations among their writers and others in their times, this dissertation follows two tracks. The first investigates how the Classics—which were shared heritages in the pre-Han period (<202 B.C.E.)—became Confucian cultural capital, on the one hand, and how Confucius and his followers were described as authoritative transmitters of ancient culture and martyrs on orders from “anti-traditional” emperors (such as the China’s first Emperor, Qin Shihuangdi), on the other hand. These four early texts, therefore, set forth the framework within which later Confucian intellectuals studied the Classics and the ancient knowledge therein, and also understood their relationship with state power. The second track explores these texts’ Sinocentric and pedantic attitude toward the circulation of the Confucian Classics among people and cultural “Others” who lacked training in the archaic language of the Classics. Nowadays, in light of the fact that the Confucian Classics have become required texts in the curriculum of national learning in the People's Republic of China (PRC), this dissertation provides a lens through which one can see more clearly how Confucianism becomes part of nation building, even in the contemporary world.
ContributorsChik, Hin Ming Frankie (Author) / Tillman, Hoyt (Thesis advisor) / Oh, Young (Committee member) / Chen, Huaiyu (Committee member) / West, Stephen (Committee member) / Williams, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
The production of “separate collections” (bieji 別集) or collected works in China is a social practice that emerged between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE. This research focuses on how the practice developed over the course of the Song dynasty (960-1279) in terms of literary materials involved, competences required, associated meanings, and its links to other social practices. I examine extant collected works, descriptions of them, and contemporary feedback on their production to create a series of snapshots that reveal its trajectory over time. Surveying the emergence of the practice in the early imperial period through its development in medieval times shows that pre-Song dynasty production of collected works was the result of several pre-existing conditions: competences related to bookmaking, the emergence of the idea of the inscription of authorial personality in literary works, the elevated status of belles-lettres, and several pre-existing tropes that lent it increasing importance. As the practice began recruiting scholars in 1020, it underwent a series of changes: attention to loss and variation between editions gave way to the search for missing works and the production of increasingly complete and authentic editions. This was followed in 1080 by several innovations, including the organization of works literary according to chronological order, rhyme, or topical category and insertion of annotations and a chronological biography. After 1180, compilers began synthesizing the accomplishments of previous editions to make editions that featured multiple annotators arranged in increasingly sophisticated ways for a new readership that were strongly associated with commercial printing. I identify six varieties of the production of the collected works of Song authors, each with distinct aims and associations that differed with respect to elements of practice, the practitioners they recruited, and how they linked with other social practices toward larger social goals. Findings contribute to Chinese book history by contextualizing change in formalistic trends over time. Identified as a social practice, the account of change and variation in the compilation of collected works during the Song presented in this research adds unique perspective to the subject of social change in this pivotal period of Chinese history.
ContributorsBilling, John Samuel (Author) / Oh, Young (Thesis advisor) / Bokenkamp, Stephen (Committee member) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Committee member) / West, Stephen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023