Topsy-Turvy World Short Plays and Farces from the Ming and Qing Dynasties
Produktdetaljer
Om bidragsyterne
Wilt L. Idema is professor emeritus of Chinese literature at Harvard University.Wai-yee Li is the 1879 Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University.
Stephen H. West is Louis Agassiz Emeritus Professor of Chinese, University of California, Berkeley, and Emeritus Foundation Professor of Chinese at Arizona State University.
This treasure box of eleven short plays, most available in English for the first time, will delight anyone interested in early modern Chinese drama, culture, and society. Ranging from Buddhist charades to human puppet shows, from sword dances to drag masquerades, these thematically diverse and inventive plays are admirably translated with erudition and panache.
- Judith Zeitlin, author of <i>The Phantom Heroine: Ghosts and Gender in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Literature</i>,
A splendid expansion of the canon of traditional Chinese drama translations—the short plays offer a riotous deep dive into a world of laughter, while the scholarly commentary succinctly explores some of the fault lines of the early modern imagination.
- Patricia Sieber, coeditor of <i>How to Read Chinese Drama in Chinese A Language Companion</i>,
A brilliant collection of rare and original works that provides a broad and varied view of Chinese performance traditions. The dominant leitmotif of these translations is the ingenuity and audacity with which writers subvert convention while questioning the sociopolitical order.
- Regina Llamas, translator of <i>Top Graduate Zhang Xie: The Earliest Extant Chinese Southern Play</i>,
<i>Zaju</i> plays of the Ming and Qing dynasties have long been a neglected area both in China and elsewhere. For that reason, this anthology is a timely translation. It provides new materials not only for general readers interested in premodern Chinese <i>zaju</i> plays but also for students and scholars to engage in further studies of the genre.
- Hongchu Fu, author of <i>Chinese Drama</i>,
A Topsy-Turvy World presents English translations of shorter sixteenth-to-eighteenth-century plays, spotlighting a lesser-known side of Chinese drama. Satirical and often earthy, these mostly one-act plays depict deceit, dissembling, reversed gender roles, and sudden upending of fortunes. With zest and humor, they portray henpecked husbands, supercilious and lustful monks, all-too-human sage kings, disgruntled officials, and overreaching young scholars. These plays provide a glimpse of Chinese daily life and mores even as they question or subvert the boundaries of social, moral, and political order.
Each translation is preceded by a short introduction that describes the play’s author, context, formal qualities, and textual history. A Topsy-Turvy World offers a new view of a significant period in the development of the Chinese theatrical tradition and provides insight into the role of drama as cultural critique.
Table of Dynasties
1. Cracking a Dumb Chan Riddle
2. The Mad Drummer: Thrice-Played Yuyang
3. Chan Master Yu Has a Dream of Cuixiang
4. Real Puppets
5. Sublime Jokes from the Back of Beyond
6. Pinning Flowers in His Coiffure
7. A Song for a Laugh
8. Ramblings with Magicians in Lyrics and Songs
9. Black and White Donkeys
10. Zaju from the Studio of Singing on the Wind
11. Song of Dragon Well Tea
Appendix: A List of Short Plays from the Period 1400 to 1850 Already Available in English Translation
Contributors
References
Produktdetaljer
Om bidragsyterne
Wilt L. Idema is professor emeritus of Chinese literature at Harvard University.Wai-yee Li is the 1879 Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University.
Stephen H. West is Louis Agassiz Emeritus Professor of Chinese, University of California, Berkeley, and Emeritus Foundation Professor of Chinese at Arizona State University.