Battles, Betrayals, and Brotherhood

Battles, Betrayals, and Brotherhood PDF Author:
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 1603849106
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
No cycle of historical legends has enjoyed greater or more enduring popularity in China than that of the Three Kingdoms, which recounts the dramatic story of the civil wars (c. AD 180–220) that divided the old Han empire into the Shu-Han, Wei, and Wu states, and the eventual reunification of the realm under the Western Jin in AD 280.

Battles, Betrayals, and Brotherhood

Battles, Betrayals, and Brotherhood PDF Author:
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 1603849106
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 503

Get Book Here

Book Description
No cycle of historical legends has enjoyed greater or more enduring popularity in China than that of the Three Kingdoms, which recounts the dramatic story of the civil wars (c. AD 180–220) that divided the old Han empire into the Shu-Han, Wei, and Wu states, and the eventual reunification of the realm under the Western Jin in AD 280.

How to Read Chinese Drama

How to Read Chinese Drama PDF Author: Patricia Sieber
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231546661
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
This book is a comprehensive and inviting introduction to the literary forms and cultural significance of Chinese drama as both text and performance. Each chapter offers an accessible overview and critical analysis of one or more plays—canonical as well as less frequently studied works—and their historical contexts. How to Read Chinese Drama highlights how each play sheds light on key aspects of the dramatic tradition, including genre conventions, staging practices, musical performance, audience participation, and political resonances, emphasizing interconnections among chapters. It brings together leading scholars spanning anthropology, art history, ethnomusicology, history, literature, and theater studies. How to Read Chinese Drama is straightforward, clear, and concise, written for undergraduate students and their instructors as well as a wider audience interested in world theater. For students of Chinese literature and language, the book provides questions to explore when reading, watching, and listening to plays, and it features bilingual excerpts. For teachers, an analytical table of contents, a theater-specific chronology of events, and lists of visual resources and translations provide pedagogical resources for exploring Chinese theater within broader cultural and comparative contexts. For theater practitioners, the volume offers deeply researched readings of important plays together with background on historical performance conventions, audience responses, and select modern adaptations.

The Halberd at Red Cliff

The Halberd at Red Cliff PDF Author: Xiaofei Tian
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684170923
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
"The turn of the third century CE—known as the Jian’an era or Three Kingdoms period—holds double significance for the Chinese cultural tradition. Its writings laid the foundation of classical poetry and literary criticism. Its historical personages and events have also inspired works of poetry, fiction, drama, film, and art throughout Chinese history, including Internet fantasy literature today. There is a vast body of secondary literature on these two subjects individually, but very little on their interface. The image of the Jian’an era, with its feasting, drinking, heroism, and literary panache, as well as intense male friendship, was to return time and again in the romanticized narrative of the Three Kingdoms. How did Jian’an bifurcate into two distinct nostalgias, one of which was the first paradigmatic embodiment of wen (literary graces, cultural patterning), and the other of wu (heroic martial virtue)? How did these largely segregated nostalgias negotiate with one another? And how is the predominantly male world of the Three Kingdoms appropriated by young women in contemporary China? The Halberd at Red Cliff investigates how these associations were closely related in their complex origins and then came to be divergent in their later metamorphoses."

Guan Yu

Guan Yu PDF Author: Barend J. ter Haar
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192525425
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Guan Yu was a minor general in the early third century CE, who supported one of numerous claimants to the throne. He was captured and executed by enemy forces in 219. He eventually became one the most popular and influential deities of imperial China under the name Lord Guan or Emperor Guan, of the same importance as the Buddhist bodhisattva Guanyin. This is a study of his cult, but also of the tremendous power of oral culture in a world where writing became increasingly important. In this study, we follow the rise of the deity through his earliest stage as a hungry ghost, his subsequent adoption by a prominent Buddhist monastery during the Tang (617-907) as its miraculous supporter, and his recruitment by Daoist ritual specialists during the Song dynasty (960-1276) as an exorcist general. He was subsequently known as a rain god, a protector against demons and barbarians, and, eventually, a moral paragon and almost messianic saviour. Throughout his divine life, the physical prowess of the deity, more specifically Lord Guan's ability to use violent action for doing good, remained an essential dimension of his image. Most research ascribes a decisive role in the rise of his cult to the literary traditions of the Three Kingdoms, best known from the famous novel by this name. This book argues that the cult arose from oral culture and spread first and foremost as an oral practice.

Northeastern Asia and the Northern Rockies

Northeastern Asia and the Northern Rockies PDF Author: Stephen Little
Publisher: punctum books
ISBN: 1685711162
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description


1616: Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu's China

1616: Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu's China PDF Author: Tian Yuan Tan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472583434
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
The year is 1616. William Shakespeare has just died and the world of the London theatres is mourning his loss. 1616 also saw the death of the famous Chinese playwright Tang Xianzu. Four hundred years on and Shakespeare is now an important meeting place for Anglo-Chinese cultural dialogue in the field of drama studies. In June 2014 (the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth), SOAS, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and the National Chung Cheng University of Taiwan gathered 20 scholars together to reflect on the theatrical practice of four hundred years ago and to ask: what does such an exploration mean culturally for us today? This ground-breaking study offers fresh insights into the respective theatrical worlds of Shakespeare and Tang Xianzu and asks how the brave new theatres of 1616 may have a vital role to play in the intercultural dialogue of our own time.

The Orphan of Zhao and Other Yuan Plays

The Orphan of Zhao and Other Yuan Plays PDF Author: Stephen H. West
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231538103
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
This is the first anthology of Yuan-dynasty zaju (miscellaneous comedies) to introduce the genre to English-speaking readers exclusively through translations of the plays' fourteenth-century editions. Almost all previous translations of Yuan-dynasty zaju are based on late-Ming regularized editions that were heavily adapted for performance at the Ming imperial court and then extensively revised in the seventeenth century for the reading pleasure of Jiangnan literati. These early editions are based on leading actor scripts and contain arias, prose dialogue, and cue lines. They encompass a fascinating range of subject matter, from high political intrigue to commoner life and religious conversion. Crackling with raw emotion, violent imagery, and colorful language and wit, the zaju in this volume explore the consequences of loyalty and betrayal, ambition and enlightenment, and piety and drunkenness. The collection features seven of the twenty-six available untranslated zaju published in the fourteenth century, with a substantial introduction preceding each play and extensive annotations throughout. The editors also include translations of the Ming versions of four of the included plays and an essay that synthesizes recent Chinese and Japanese scholarship on the subject.

The Generals of the Yang Family

The Generals of the Yang Family PDF Author: Wilt L. Idema
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814508691
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
This book offers a complete translation of four early plays of the Yang Family Generals. The story of the Yang Family Generals, particularly its female generals, was a perennial favorite on the Chinese stage in the 19th and 20th centuries. In detailing the role of this military family in the Song-Khitan wars of the late 10th and early 11th centuries, these four plays are all in the form of zaju, a type of play that originated in the 13th century. These plays are from the 15th and 16th centuries and allow a glimpse into earlier renditions of the Yang Family saga, which is a decidedly more male-centered tradition than that performed in the Qing dynasty. This volume offers the only complete English-language translation of these early plays. These plays allow access to the earliest phase in the development of the Yang Family saga. The plays provide information on the staging of large battle scenes on the stage and have considerable literary and cultural value.

Music, Mind, and Language in Chinese Poetry and Performance

Music, Mind, and Language in Chinese Poetry and Performance PDF Author: Casey Schoenberger
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198886241
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
"Poetry puts intent into words; singing lengthens words"--this is one of the earliest Chinese comments on artistic expression. Poetic language extends the reach of a sentiment beyond the individual, and musicality extends the reach of poetic language, not only across a room, but across geography and generations. The "extended mind thesis" (EMT) views minds as extending beyond individual nervous systems to include material and social environments. Music, Mind, and Language in Chinese Poetry and Performance: The Voice Extended offers a comprehensive overview of the interwoven histories of traditional Chinese poetry and performing arts. It employs cognitive and quantitative methods such as EMT, and a database of over six thousand traditional melodies, to describe cyclical, continuous interactions between social minds and material artifacts. From the ancient Canon of Poetry to the song-lyrics (ci) of the late medieval period and the dramatic arias of Kun and Beijing operas, Casey Schoenberger introduces the rhythms, melodies, pronunciation, and grammatical stylistics of the major Chinese verse and performance traditions. In doing so, he gleans insights from cognitive neuroscience, digital humanities, musicology, and linguistics to explain not only the trajectory of Chinese arts, but also bigger phenomena, like vernacularisation and improvisation.

Generals Of The Yang Family, The: Four Early Plays

Generals Of The Yang Family, The: Four Early Plays PDF Author: Wilt Lukas Idema
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9814508705
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
This book offers a complete translation of four early plays of the Yang Family Generals. The story of the Yang Family Generals, particularly its female generals, was a perennial favorite on the Chinese stage in the 19th and 20th centuries. In detailing the role of this military family in the Song-Khitan wars of the late 10th and early 11th centuries, these four plays are all in the form of zaju, a type of play that originated in the 13th century. These plays are from the 15th and 16th centuries and allow a glimpse into earlier renditions of the Yang Family saga, which is a decidedly more male-centered tradition than that performed in the Qing dynasty.This volume offers the only complete English-language translation of these early plays. These plays allow access to the earliest phase in the development of the Yang Family saga. The plays provide information on the staging of large battle scenes on the stage and have considerable literary and cultural value.