Organizer: Robert Hymes, Columbia University
Chair: Lucille Chia, University of California, Riverside
Solving a Puzzle: The Division between Nanxi and Chuanqi
Mei Sun, National University of Singapore
In studies of Chinese theater, the historical line between nanxi (literally, "southern theater") and chuanqi (literally, "transmission of the marvelous") remains controversial. One popular view sets the divide in the transition between the Yuan (1271-1368) and the Ming (1368-1644) dynasties; another common view believes that the divide was in the middle of the Ming dynasty. This paper analyzes this issue, and suggests a new perspective.
The contradiction in this issue partially results from the confusing usage of the terms nanxi and chuanqi during the Yuan and Ming dynasties. This paper comprehensively examines these various usages and then defines the two genres nanxi and chuanqi.
This paper further argues that, based upon historical facts, the evolution from nanxi to chuanqi was a gradual process. From the end of the Yuan dynasty to around the middle of the Ming dynasty, nanxi underwent a series of noticeable changes in its music, plays, textual forms, and performances. None of these changes individually transformed nanxi to chuanqi . Over the years, however, the cumulative alterations altered the aesthetic characteristics of nanxi. During the transition, because of its mixed stage, this transmuting form could be regarded as either the disappearing nanxi or the nascent chuanqi .
This paper concludes that it is better to deal with the transition from nanxi to chuanqi as a process-an overlap period of both the disappearance of nanxi and the formation of chuanqi-and to avoid artificially seeking a sharp divide to separate the transition into two periods.
Reconstructing Courtesans in the Late Ming: An Examination of Two Plays by the
Literati and One Fragment by a Courtesan
Ann-Marie Hsiung, University of Hawai'i
Courtesan culture, often associated with the cult of qing, thrived in the late Ming period while the social system was insisting upon female chastity. These contradictory impulses are most succinctly reflected in dramatic representations of courtesans. To investigate how courtesans were constructed in the diverse late Ming culture, this paper examines two literati's plays, the surviving portions of one courtesan's play, and some facts known about historical courtesans.
Yuan Yuling's Xilou ji (The Story of West Tower) and Xu Fuzuo's Hongli ji (The Story of Red Pear) demonstrate how the love and aspiration of courtesans echoed late Ming trends. Courtesans who audaciously and perseveringly pursue love and marriage escape the status of mere "beautiful merchandise"; still, the representations of their loathed courtesan life, longing for marriage and persistent loyalty to one man for life reflect patriarchal values. The courtesans' unswerving love for literary scholars, moreover, reveals the literati's fantasies and anxiety as they faced the rise of the merchant class.
Viewing the surviving portions of Ma Xianglan's Sansheng zhuan (The Story of Three Lives) and the available biographical information, I examine courtesans' self-perceptions in love, and their self-fulfillment in artistic achievements. Both of these deviate from male representations. Aspects of other historical courtesans are adduced to analyze their multiple dimensions both affected by and transcending literati's dramatic representations. By analyzing the male literati's and Ma Xianglan's dramatic representations in their late Ming cultural-historical context, I show the complex construction of courtesan characters, illustrate the intricate interactions between drama and life, and demonstrate how courtesans, at different levels, perpetuate, transform and resist patriarchal order.
Activities of the Ta-hsia: A Window on Late Ming Political Culture
Jie Zhao, Willamette University
During the 16th century, a number of individuals of obscure social background attracted the attention of literati writers on account of their aggressive activities in the political and intellectual arenas. These men sought to achieve ambitious goals. Some were attracted to politics and established connections with powerful officials in order to apply their strategies behind the scenes. Others associated with influential figures in literati circles and participated in their discussions and lectures (chiang-hsueh ). In spite of their different activities, all of these men were assigned the same label: ta-hsia.
This paper will examine the ways in which the activities of ta-hsia enriched the political culture of the time. I intend to approach this objective by analyzing the term itself and the ways it was used. The word ta-hsia was not new, having been used as early as the Warring States period, but what implications did it convey in the political and intellectual context of late Ming? Did it refer to an identifiable social group, or was it used in a looser sense? Did the so-called ta-hsia identify themselves as such, or was this label applied only by others? Who were these others, and what purposes did their use of this label serve? It is my belief that the activities of the ta-hsia and the attitudes of the literati writers who recorded those activities together provide us with a window through which to better observe and understand the complexities of late Ming political culture.
Exemplary Sodomites: Gender and Moral Hybridism in Bian er chai
Giovanni Vitiello, University of California, Berkeley
This paper aims at connecting the discourse on gender and sexuality articulated in the late Ming male homoerotic collection Bian er chai (Cap and Hairpins), by The West-Lake-Crazed Master Moon-Heart, with the trait of eclecticism characterizing late Ming intellectual life and culture.
Bian er chai's novellas are devoted to exemplary sodomites-romantic heroes, whose peculiar excellence resides in their matching the highest standards of male and female morality both. The heroes who wear-symbolically if not literally-both cap and hairpins, are not so much the product of a mechanical replacement of virile virtues with feminine ones, as they are of a new moral negotiation between the two. The protagonists of these novellas are constructed through a transplanting of gendered moral values; they are moral hybrids whose romantic originality is produced by setting, like a gem-stone, the ultimate female virtue in a most virtuous male body and intelligence. In a parallel way, to such embodiment of gender systems corresponds their interiorization of multiple moral systems-the Confucian and the Buddhist, the Chivalric and the Romantic. Heroes of composite moral ascendancy, they are at once loyal knights, passionate lovers, and filial sons.
Master Moon-Heart's interest in gender and moral complexity, I will argue, can be usefully connected with the eclecticism in late Ming culture-as it is expressed, for instance, in the philosophy of the so-called Taizhou School, and in the doctrine of the "Three Teachings in One" (san jiao wei yi)-to point out discursive convergences between philosophy and pornography, around the issue of desire.
Dating and Authorship of Chinese Fiction: On Stylistic Method
Qing Ping Wang, Stanford University
The stylistic method was originally employed by Professor Patrick Hanan to determine the dates and authorship of Chinese short stories (The Chinese Short Story: Studies in Dating,Authorship and Composition, Harvard University Press, 1973). Although he obtained many significant results, Hanan considered his contribution not to be primarily methodological. He strictly restricted the use of his method "for the short story only, and in a particular age."
Following Hanan's research, some historical materials have been discovered and some related studies have been conducted in these two decades. Based upon these developments, this paper reexamines Hanan's specific study on these short stories, and discusses the possibilities of using the stylistic method in the dating and authorship of other Chinese fiction. It shows that Hanan's results are quite convincing on the whole, and his stylistic method can be used, with some adjustment and limitations, to resolve certain problems in the authorship of other Chinese fictions.
As a pilot test, this study applies the stylistic method to determine the authorship of an early Qing scholar-beauty romance, YuJiao Li. By comparing certain stylistic features of Yu Jiao Li and the other nine novels written by eight different writers, this paper demonstrates that these individual writers have their own styles and the writer of YuJiao Li is the writer of Ping Shan Leng Yan,whose pen name is Tianhuazang Zhuren (Master of the Heavenly Flower Sutra).