Overtime, peacock iconography evolved to include thematic diversity, as artists used the peacock’s recognizable physical attributes for the representation of new themes based on traditional ideas. Numerous paintings contain angels wings covered in the iridescent eyespots located on the male peafowl’s tail feathers. Scientifically known as ocelli, eyespots painted on the wings of angels became a widespread motif during the Renaissance. Artists also recurrently depicted the peacock’s crest on figures of Satan or Lucifer in both paintings and prints. Indicative of excessive pride, a believed characteristic of peacocks, the crest is used as an identifying characteristic of the fallen angel, who was cast from heaven because of his pride.
Although the peacock is a known iconographic motif in medieval and Renaissance art history, no specific monographic study on peacock iconography exists. Likewise, representations of separate and distinctive peacock characteristics in Christian
art have been considerably ignored. Yet, the numerous artworks depicting the peacock and its attributes speak to the need to gain a better understanding of the different strategies for peacock allegory in Christian art. This thesis provides a comprehensive understanding of peacock iconography, minimizing the mystery behind the artistic intentions for depicting peacocks, and allowing for more thorough readings of medieval and Renaissance works that utilize peafowl imagery.
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.
from the Apocalypse, Saint Mary Magdalene from the New Testament, and the
Daughters of Mara from the Buddhist tradition are all accused of fornication or the
seduction of men. However, when artists have depicted these subjects, the women are
rarely shown transgressing in the ways the texts describe. The Great Whore is often
masculinized and shown as the equal of kings, Mary Magdalene assumes divergent
attitudes about prostitution in early Renaissance Europe, and the Daughters of Mara are
comparable to other Buddhist deities, recognizable only from the surrounding narrative.
Therefore, in this inquiry, I seek out the ways that artists have manipulated misogynistic
religious narratives and introduced their own fears, concerns, and interpretations.
Artistic deviations from the text indicate a sensitivity to cultural values beyond
the substance of their roles within the narrative. Both the Great Whore and her virtuous
counterpart, the Woman Clothed in the Sun, have agency, and the ways they are shown to
use their agency determines their moral status. Mary Magdalene, the patron saint of
prostitutes and a reformed sinner, is shown with iconographical markers beyond just
prostitution, and reveals the ways in which Renaissance artists conceptualized prostitution. In
the last case study, the comparison between the Daughters and the Buddhist savioresses,
the Taras, demonstrates that Himalayan artists did not completely subscribe to the textual
formulations of women as inherently iniquitous. Ultimately, these works of art divulge
not just interpretations of the religious traditions, but attitudes about women in general,
and the power they wielded in their respective contexts.
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.
In this thesis, three chapters discuss the relationship between Chinese modern and contemporary art and the CCP. In my theoretical exposition, I argue that the artistic/intellectual subjectivity of modern Chinese artists gradually developed and changed during the conflict and struggle with the Communist rule.
In the first chapter, I introduce the biography and artistic creation of Chinese literati painters under the communist rule, exemplified by Wu Hufan吳湖帆. I analyze and demonstrate how the subjectivity of the traditional literati gradually lost strength under the pressure of nationalism, the disenchantment with modernization, and communism. In the second chapter, I focus on the Scar Art art movement of the 1970s to the 1980s, as well as representative artists and their works in this direction of art, such as Cheng Conglin程叢林 and Gao Xiaohua高小華. In this chapter, I use feminism and Foucault's political-philosophical theories to explain these visual expressions of the memory of historical trauma in Scar Art during this period. In Chapter 3, by discussing the works of two artists, He Gong何工 and Ai Weiwei艾未未, in the context of Foucault’s political philosophy, I argue that artists how to express their intellectual subjectivity and political resistance through their contributions to Chinese contemporary art.
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.