Green Peony And The Rise Of The Chinese Martial Arts Novel

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Green Peony and the Rise of the Chinese Martial Arts Novel

Author : Margaret B. Wan
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 0791477053
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (914 download)

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Book Synopsis Green Peony and the Rise of the Chinese Martial Arts Novel by : Margaret B. Wan

Download or read book Green Peony and the Rise of the Chinese Martial Arts Novel written by Margaret B. Wan and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2009-01-05 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Martial arts fiction has been synonymous with popular fiction in China from the Qing dynasty on. This book, the first to trace the early development of the martial arts novel in China, demonstrates that the genre took shape nearly a century earlier than generally recognized. Green Peony (1800), one of the earliest martial arts novels, lies at the center of a web of literary relations connecting many of the significant genres of fiction in its day. Adapted from a drum ballad, Green Peony parodies both previous popular fiction and the great Ming novels, generating humorous reflection on their values. By focusing on popular fiction and popular culture, Margaret B. Wan argues for the relevance of genre to literary criticism, the convergence of "popular" and "elite" fiction in the nineteenth century, and a general turn from didacticism to entertainment. Literary scholars, historians, and anyone who wishes to know more about Chinese popular culture in the Qing dynasty will benefit from reading this book.

Chinese Martial Arts

Author : Peter A. Lorge
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 0521878810
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (218 download)

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Book Synopsis Chinese Martial Arts by : Peter A. Lorge

Download or read book Chinese Martial Arts written by Peter A. Lorge and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the global world of the twenty-first century, martial arts are practised for self-defense and sporting purposes only. However, for thousands of years, they were a central feature of military practice in China and essential for the smooth functioning of society. This book, which opens with an intriguing account of the very first female martial artist, charts the history of combat and fighting techniques in China from the Bronze Age to the present. This broad panorama affords fascinating glimpses into the transformation of martial skills, techniques and weaponry against the background of Chinese history, the rise and fall of empires, their governments and their armies. Quotations from literature and poetry, and the stories of individual warriors, infuse the narrative, offering personal reflections on prowess in the battlefield and techniques of engagement. This is an engaging and readable introduction to the authentic history of Chinese martial arts.

Chinese Law

Author : Li Chen
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 900428849X
Total Pages : 410 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Chinese Law by : Li Chen

Download or read book Chinese Law written by Li Chen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-01-27 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Chinese Law, edited by Li Chen and Madeleine Zelin, the authors provide valuable perspectives on the transformation, knowledge, practice, and effects of Chinese law and justice in the changing historical context of late imperial and modern China.

Understanding and Translating Chinese Martial Arts

Author : Dan Jiao
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 9811984255
Total Pages : 146 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (119 download)

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Book Synopsis Understanding and Translating Chinese Martial Arts by : Dan Jiao

Download or read book Understanding and Translating Chinese Martial Arts written by Dan Jiao and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-02-01 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present book features some introductory discussions on martial arts for the international audience and highlights in brief the complexities of translating the genre into English, often from a comparative literature perspective. Martial arts, also known as Kungfu or Wushu, refer to different families of Chinese fighting styles over many centuries. Martial arts fiction, or Wuxia literature, is a unique genre that depicts adventures of martial artists in ancient China. Understanding martial arts and the Chinese culture and philosophy behind them creates an intriguing experience, particularly, for non-Chinese readers; translating the literature into English poses unparalleled challenges for translators not only because of the culture embedded in it but also the fascinating martial arts moves and captivating names of many characters therein.

Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge

Author : D. S. Farrer
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438439687
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge by : D. S. Farrer

Download or read book Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge written by D. S. Farrer and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2011-12-01 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This landmark work provides a wide-ranging scholarly consideration of the traditional Asian martial arts. Most of the contributors to the volume are practitioners of the martial arts, and all are keenly aware that these traditions now exist in a transnational context. The book's cutting-edge research includes ethnography and approaches from film, literature, performance, and theater studies. Three central aspects emerge from this book: martial arts as embodied fantasy, as a culturally embedded form of self-cultivation, and as a continuous process of identity formation. Contributors explore several popular and highbrow cultural considerations, including the career of Bruce Lee, Chinese wuxia films, and Don DeLillo's novel Running Dog. Ethnographies explored describe how the social body trains in martial arts and how martial arts are constructed in transnational training. Ultimately, this academic study of martial arts offers a focal point for new understandings of cultural and social beliefs and of practice and agency.

Chinese Martial Arts and Media Culture

Author : Tim Trausch
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1786609037
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (866 download)

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Book Synopsis Chinese Martial Arts and Media Culture by : Tim Trausch

Download or read book Chinese Martial Arts and Media Culture written by Tim Trausch and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-11-16 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Signs and images of Chinese martial arts increasingly circulate through global media cultures. As tropes of martial arts are not restricted to what is considered one medium, one region, or one (sub)genre, the essays in this collection are looking across and beyond these alleged borders. From 1920s wuxia cinema to the computer game cultures of the information age, they trace the continuities and transformations of martial arts and media culture across time, space, and multiple media platforms.

Regional Literature and the Transmission of Culture

Author : Margaret B. Wan
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 1684176077
Total Pages : 458 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (841 download)

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Book Synopsis Regional Literature and the Transmission of Culture by : Margaret B. Wan

Download or read book Regional Literature and the Transmission of Culture written by Margaret B. Wan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-03-08 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Regional Literature and the Transmission of Culture provides a richly textured picture of cultural transmission in the Qing and early Republican eras. Drum ballad texts (guci) evoke one of the most popular performance traditions of their day, a practice that flourished in North China. Study of these narratives opens up surprising new perspectives on vital topics in Chinese literature and history: the creation of regional cultural identities and their relation to a central “Chinese culture”; the relationship between oral and written cultures; the transmission of legal knowledge and popular ideals of justice; and the impact of the changing technology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on the reproduction and dissemination of popular texts. Margaret B. Wan maps the dissemination over time and space of two legends of wise judges; their journey through oral, written, and visual media reveals a fascinating but overlooked world of “popular” literature. While drum ballads form a distinctively regional literature, lithography in early twentieth-century Shanghai drew them into national markets. The new paradigm this book offers will interest scholars of cultural history, literature, book culture, legal history, and popular culture.

Sound Rising from the Paper

Author : Paize Keulemans
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 1684175445
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (841 download)

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Book Synopsis Sound Rising from the Paper by : Paize Keulemans

Download or read book Sound Rising from the Paper written by Paize Keulemans and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chinese martial arts novels from the late nineteenth century are filled with a host of suggestive sounds. Characters cuss and curse in colorful dialect accents, vendor calls ring out from bustling marketplaces, and martial arts action scenes come to life with the loud clash of swords and the sounds of bodies colliding. What is the purpose of these sounds, and what is their history? In Sound Rising from the Paper, Paize Keulemans answers these questions by critically reexamining the relationship between martial arts novels published in the final decades of the nineteenth century and earlier storyteller manuscripts. He finds that by incorporating, imitating, and sometimes inventing storyteller sounds, these novels turned the text from a silent object into a lively simulacrum of festival atmosphere, thereby transforming the solitary act of reading into the communal sharing of an oral performance. By focusing on the role sound played in late nineteenth-century martial arts fiction, Keulemans offers alternatives to the visual models that have dominated our approach to the study of print culture, the commercialization of textual production, and the construction of the modern reading subject.

The Subtle Body

Author : Simon Cox
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197581056
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (975 download)

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Book Synopsis The Subtle Body by : Simon Cox

Download or read book The Subtle Body written by Simon Cox and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-18 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does the soul relate to the body? Through the ages, innumerable religious and intellectual movements have proposed answers to this question. Many have gravitated to the notion of the "subtle body," positing some sort of subtle entity that is neither soul nor body, but some mixture of the two. Simon Cox traces the history of this idea from the late Roman Empire to the present day, touching on how philosophers, wizards, scholars, occultists, psychologists, and mystics have engaged with the idea over the past two thousand years. This study is an intellectual history of the subtle body concept from its origins in late antiquity through the Renaissance into the Euro-American counterculture of the 1960's and 70's. It begins with a prehistory of the idea, rooted as it is in third-century Neoplatonism. It then proceeds to the signifier "subtle body" in its earliest English uses amongst the Cambridge Platonists. After that, it looks forward to those Orientalist fathers of Indology, who, in their earliest translations of Sanskrit philosophy relied heavily on the Cambridge Platonist lexicon, and thereby brought Indian philosophy into what had hitherto been a distinctly platonic discourse. At this point, the story takes a little reflexive stroll into the source of the author's own interest in this strange concept, looking at Helena Blavatsky and the Theosophical import, expression, and popularization of the concept. Cox then zeroes in on Aleister Crowley, focusing on the subtle body in fin de siècle occultism. Finally, he turns to Carl Jung, his colleague Frederic Spiegelberg, and the popularization of the idea of the subtle body in the Euro-American counterculture. This book is for anyone interested in yogic, somatic, or energetic practices, and will be very useful to scholars and area specialists who rely on this term in dealing with Hindu, Daoist, and Buddhist texts.

The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature

Author : Victor H. Mair
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231153139
Total Pages : 662 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (311 download)

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Book Synopsis The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature by : Victor H. Mair

Download or read book The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature written by Victor H. Mair and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature, two of the world's leading sinologists, Victor H. Mair and Mark Bender, capture the breadth of China's oral-based literary heritage. This collection presents works drawn from the large body of oral literature of many of China's recognized ethnic groups--including the Han, Yi, Miao, Tu, Daur, Tibetan, Uyghur, and Kazak--and the selections include a variety of genres. Chapters cover folk stories, songs, rituals, and drama, as well as epic traditions and professional storytelling, and feature both familiar and little-known texts, from the story of the woman warrior Hua Mulan to the love stories of urban storytellers in the Yangtze delta, the shaman rituals of the Manchu, and a trickster tale of the Daur people from the forests of the northeast. The Cannibal Grandmother of the Yi and other strange creatures and characters unsettle accepted notions of Chinese fable and literary form. Readers are introduced to antiphonal songs of the Zhuang and the Dong, who live among the fantastic limestone hills of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region; work and matchmaking songs of the mountain-dwelling She of Fujian province; and saltwater songs of the Cantonese-speaking boat people of Hong Kong. The editors feature the Mongolian epic poems of Geser Khan and Jangar; the sad tale of the Qeo family girl, from the Tu people of Gansu and Qinghai provinces; and local plays known as "rice sprouts" from Hebei province. These fascinating juxtapositions invite comparisons among cultures, styles, and genres, and expert translations preserve the individual character of each thrillingly imaginative work.

Yangzhou, A Place in Literature

Author : Roland Altenburger
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824854462
Total Pages : 530 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (248 download)

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Book Synopsis Yangzhou, A Place in Literature by : Roland Altenburger

Download or read book Yangzhou, A Place in Literature written by Roland Altenburger and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2015-01-31 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the famous canal cities of the world and a former center of culture, trade, transportation, and fashion, the old town of Yangzhou evokes romantic bridges, beautiful courtesans, fine gardens, and eccentric painters. It is also remembered as a war-torn ruin after the Qing conquest and the Taiping Rebellion, and as a city in decline as trade shifted to seaports and railways. Yangzhou, A Place in Literature, the first anthology to center on a Chinese city and its local region, offers a wealth of literary, semi-literary, and oral texts representing social life over three hundred years of dramatic change between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. The selections in this volume represent a wide range of literary forms and styles, both elite and popular, with subjects ranging from literature, history, theater, and art to the history of architecture and gardening, and of material culture at large. Readers will come across rarely found details of everyday life, the sights, smells, and sounds of the lanes and teahouses, a world of taverns, pilgrimages, communal baths, fish markets, salt merchants, acting troupes, and food in one of the wealthiest cities of imperial China. Each text has an introductory essay and rich textual notes by an expert in the relevant field. The general introduction provides an in-depth discussion of the roles of the local in historical, cultural, literary, and linguistic terms, as mirrored by the wide range of translated sources collected in this volume. The selected texts are historically and intellectually important in their own right, but the volume greatly enhances their collective value by combining them, arranging them in historical sequence, and providing a dense network of cross-references that invite comparisons and reveal contrasts in style, form, focus, and topic. With its compelling accounts of material culture, urban spaces, entertainment, and gender, Yangzhou, A Place in Literature will fascinate scholars and students alike by opening a window to the rich cultural history of Yangzhou. The volume can serve as a textbook for courses on traditional and modern Chinese literature, popular culture, the city, or social history. It will be of great interest to scholars of East Asian studies, as well as to those in a variety of comparative fields, such as urban studies, theater studies, and gender studies.

Death in Beijing

Author : Daniel Asen
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107126061
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Death in Beijing by : Daniel Asen

Download or read book Death in Beijing written by Daniel Asen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-28 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative exploration of China's modern transformation through the history of homicide investigation and forensic science in Republican Beijing. Daniel Asen examines the process through which imperial China's tradition of forensic science came to serve the needs of a changing state and society under dramatically new circumstances.

Lost Colony

Author : Tonio Andrade
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691159572
Total Pages : 447 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis Lost Colony by : Tonio Andrade

Download or read book Lost Colony written by Tonio Andrade and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-04 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How a Chinese pirate defeated European colonialists and won Taiwan during the seventeenth century During the seventeenth century, Holland created the world's most dynamic colonial empire, outcompeting the British and capturing Spanish and Portuguese colonies. Yet, in the Sino-Dutch War—Europe's first war with China—the Dutch met their match in a colorful Chinese warlord named Koxinga. Part samurai, part pirate, he led his generals to victory over the Dutch and captured one of their largest and richest colonies—Taiwan. How did he do it? Examining the strengths and weaknesses of European and Chinese military techniques during the period, Lost Colony provides a balanced new perspective on long-held assumptions about Western power, Chinese might, and the nature of war. It has traditionally been asserted that Europeans of the era possessed more advanced science, technology, and political structures than their Eastern counterparts, but historians have recently contested this view, arguing that many parts of Asia developed on pace with Europe until 1800. While Lost Colony shows that the Dutch did indeed possess a technological edge thanks to the Renaissance fort and the broadside sailing ship, that edge was neutralized by the formidable Chinese military leadership. Thanks to a rich heritage of ancient war wisdom, Koxinga and his generals outfoxed the Dutch at every turn. Exploring a period when the military balance between Europe and China was closer than at any other point in modern history, Lost Colony reassesses an important chapter in world history and offers valuable and surprising lessons for contemporary times.

The Novel: An Alternative History, 1600-1800

Author : Steven Moore
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1623565197
Total Pages : 1025 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (235 download)

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Book Synopsis The Novel: An Alternative History, 1600-1800 by : Steven Moore

Download or read book The Novel: An Alternative History, 1600-1800 written by Steven Moore and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-08-29 with total page 1025 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Christian Gauss Award for excellence in literary scholarship from the Phi Beta Kappa Society Having excavated the world's earliest novels in his previous book, literary historian Steven Moore explores in this sequel the remarkable flowering of the novel between the years 1600 and 1800-from Don Quixote to America's first big novel, an homage to Cervantes entitled Modern Chivalry. This is the period of such classic novels as Tom Jones, Candide, and Dangerous Liaisons, but beyond the dozen or so recognized classics there are hundreds of other interesting novels that appeared then, known only to specialists: Spanish picaresques, French heroic romances, massive Chinese novels, Japanese graphic novels, eccentric English novels, and the earliest American novels. These minor novels are not only interesting in their own right, but also provide the context needed to appreciate why the major novels were major breakthroughs. The novel experienced an explosive growth spurt during these centuries as novelists experimented with different forms and genres: epistolary novels, romances, Gothic thrillers, novels in verse, parodies, science fiction, episodic road trips, and family sagas, along with quirky, unclassifiable experiments in fiction that resemble contemporary, avant-garde works. As in his previous volume, Moore privileges the innovators and outriders, those who kept the novel novel. In the most comprehensive history of this period ever written, Moore examines over 400 novels from around the world in a lively style that is as entertaining as it is informative. Though written for a general audience, The Novel, An Alternative History also provides the scholarly apparatus required by the serious student of the period. This sequel, like its predecessor, is a “zestfully encyclopedic, avidly opinionated, and dazzlingly fresh history of the most 'elastic' of literary forms” (Booklist).

Literary Migrations

Author : Claudine Salmon
Publisher : Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
ISBN 13 : 9814414328
Total Pages : 488 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (144 download)

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Book Synopsis Literary Migrations by : Claudine Salmon

Download or read book Literary Migrations written by Claudine Salmon and published by Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. This book was released on 2013-11-13 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was written between 1981 and 1986, was first published in 1987, and has been out of print since. The Chinese version of it by Yan Bao et al., Zhongguo chuantong xiaoshuo zai yazhou, which also published in 1989, is also out of print. Since then more works especially in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Western languages have appeared which are mainly concerned with cultural exchanges between China and the countries of East Asia. Moreover a new interest has arisen among scholars from various countries on what has been termed “Asian translation traditions” and conferences are regularly organized on this topic. Judging from this rising interest in translation history, this book on traditional Chinese fiction in Asia, which sets the question of Asian translations into a general framework, and so far has no equivalent, is still of service to researchers.

The Generals of the Yang Family

Author : Wilt L Idema
Publisher : World Scientific
ISBN 13 : 9814508705
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (145 download)

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Book Synopsis The Generals of the Yang Family by : Wilt L Idema

Download or read book The Generals of the Yang Family written by Wilt L Idema and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2013-07-29 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. Contents:The Eighth Great Prince Opens a Proclamation and Saves a Loyal VassalAt Bright Sky Pagoda Meng Liang Steals the BonesXie Jinwu Underhandedly Tears Down Clear Breeze MansionYang Six Lines Up His Troops to Defeat the Heavenly ArrayAppendix 1: A Summary of Expanded Account of the Loyalty and Bravery over Successive Generations of the Yang FamilyAppendix 2: A Summary of the Relevant Chapters from An Account of [The Prince] of Southern Song and a Summary of An Account of the Northern SongAppendix 3: The Ming Play The Three PassesAppendix 4: The Theft of the Bones: Three Versions Readership: Graduate and undergraduate students, academic researchers and scholars who are interested in Chinese literature and Chinese theater, Chinese military and martial culture; general audience interested in Chinese folklore and Chinese history. Keywords:Yang Family Generals;Khitan-Song Wars;Zaju Drama;Warfare;Emperor and Imperial Relatives;Popular LiteratureReviews: “As an introduction to stories that continue to resonate with Chinese audiences now centuries after their earliest versions, one could not find a more suitable, or enjoyable, collection than this.” Robert E. Hegel Washington University, St. Louis, United States

The Generals of the Yang Family

Author : Wilt L. Idema
Publisher : World Scientific
ISBN 13 : 9814508691
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (145 download)

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Book Synopsis The Generals of the Yang Family by : Wilt L. Idema

Download or read book The Generals of the Yang Family written by Wilt L. Idema and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2013 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.