Ritual Opera and Mercantile Lineage : The Confucian Transformation of Popular Culture in Late Imperial Huizhou / Qitao Guo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Guo, Qitao, Author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (384 p.) : 3 tables, 13 figures, 11 illustrations, 1 map

Place of Publication:

Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, [2022]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

This book analyzes Confucian ideology as culture and culture as history by exploring the interplay between popular ritual performance of the opera Mulian and gentrified mercantile lineages in late imperial Huizhou. Mulian, originally a Buddhist tale featuring the monk Mulian's journey through the underworld to save his mother, underwent a Confucian transformation in the sixteenth century against a backdrop of vast socioeconomic, intellectual, cultural, and religious changes. The author shows how local elites appropriated the performance of Mulian, turning it into a powerful medium for conveying orthodox values and religious precepts and for negotiating local social and gender issues altered by the rising money economy. The sociocultural approach of this historical study lifts Mulian out of the exorcistic-dramatic-ethnographic milieu to which it is usually consigned. This new approach enables the author to develop an alternative interpretation of Chinese popular culture and the Confucian tradition, which in turn sheds significant new light upon the social history of late imperial China.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Map, Figures, and Tables

List of Abbreviations

List of Reign Periods of the Ming and Qing Dynasties

Acknowledgments

Map

Introduction

Part One. The Setting

Part Two. The Script

Part Three. The Performance

Conclusion

Appendix A: Extant Mulian Operatic Scripts

Appendix B: Huizhou Ancestral Halls (ca. 1500 –1644)

Appendix C: Homophonic and Graphic Substitutions and Sardonic Characters in Mulian Scripts

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 31. Jan 2022)

ISBN:

1-5036-2491-9

OCLC:

1294426341