Filtering by
- All Subjects: Asian Literature
- Genre: Academic theses
- Genre: Masters Thesis
- Creators: Ling, Xiaoqiao
- Creators: Bokenkamp, Stephen
classical Chinese poem history, his poignant words, incredible literary construction, nether artistic conception and nuanced peculiar poem style owned him the reputation of “ghostly, demonic genius” 鬼才. Scholars demonstrated that his ghostly and demonic style has much to do with the special imagery and allusion in his poetry. However, this kind of ghostly appeal of literature exactly have much to do with the large quantity of sensory vocabulary that the poet is expert in using in his poems, which evokes resonance from the readers/audiences. Li He fuses visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and tactile sensation in his poems, building up his special writing style, evoking and creating a sensorial space for readers. The thesis concentrates on analyzing the sensory vocabulary in Li He’s poetry, sonic depiction in particular, which are rarely discussed before, based on which making further conclusion about the artistic conception and the special style of Li He’s poetry.
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.
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.