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The frustrations of heaven's fragrance: an analysis and translation of Guan Hanqing's Qian dayin zhichong xie tianxiang

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This thesis examines the play Qian Dayin zhichong Xie Tianxiang, written by the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) playwright Guan Hanqing (c.1225-1302). The first chapter of this paper provides brief background information about northern style Yuan drama (zaju) as well as a plot summary and notes about the analysis and translation. Through…

This thesis examines the play Qian Dayin zhichong Xie Tianxiang, written by the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) playwright Guan Hanqing (c.1225-1302). The first chapter of this paper provides brief background information about northern style Yuan drama (zaju) as well as a plot summary and notes about the analysis and translation. Through a close reading of the play, I hope to illustrate how the play's complicated ending and lack of complete resolution reveals why it has received relatively little attention from scholars who have previously discussed other strong, intelligent female characters in Guan Hanqing's plays. The second chapter of this thesis includes translation of the play that is comprised of a wedge preceding the four acts. Before each act of the play is a critical introduction and analysis of the act to follow. Although many of Guan Hanqing's plays have been translated into English, this play has never been translated.
ContributorsByrnes, Kelli (Author) / West, Stephen H. (Thesis advisor) / Zou, Yu (Committee member) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
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Neither dust nor gold: a comprehensive study of the Dadao School from 1115-1398

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…

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
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Reading resonance in Tang tales: allegories and beyond

Description
As many modern scholars have warned, the complexity of Tang narratives is far

beyond the reach of Lu Xun’s twentieth-century generic labels. Therefore, we should have

an acute awareness of the earlier limiting view of these categorizations, and our research

should transcend the limitations of these views in regard to this extensive corpus…

As many modern scholars have warned, the complexity of Tang narratives is far

beyond the reach of Lu Xun’s twentieth-century generic labels. Therefore, we should have

an acute awareness of the earlier limiting view of these categorizations, and our research

should transcend the limitations of these views in regard to this extensive corpus or to being

confined to rigid and meager reading of the richness of the stories. This dissertation will

use a transdisciplinary methodology that incorporates both history and literature in close

reading of seven Tang tales composed in the mid-to-late Tang eras (780s–early 900s), to

break the boundaries between the two generic labels, chuanqi and zhiguai, and unearth

significant configurations within these literary texts that become apparent only through

stepping across genre.
ContributorsLiu, Qian (Author) / West, Stephen H. (Thesis advisor) / Bokenkamp, Stephen (Committee member) / Cutter, Joe R (Committee member) / Tillman, Hoyt C (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
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Born of the North Wind: Northern Chinese Poetry and the Eurasian Steppes, 1206–1260

Description

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…

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.
ContributorsWen, Zuoting (Author) / West, Stephen H. (Thesis advisor) / Tillman, Hoyt C (Committee member) / Bokenkamp, Stephen (Committee member) / Brown, Claudia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020