East Asian Languages and Literatures Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing East Asian Languages and Literatures Theses and Dissertations by Subject "Body"

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    The body in the politics and society of early China
    (University of Oregon, 2007-12) He, Jianjun, 1970-
    This dissertation discusses the political conceptualization and social practice of the body in early China through a close examination of the texts and documents produced from the Spring and Autumn period to the end of the Eastern Han dynasty. It demonstrates that, in addition to medical concerns, the body in early China was transformed into a political concept and a ritual subject that served indispensably in state construction and social control. It is divided into the following three chapters. Chapter one, "Physiognomy and the Body," examines the relationship between physiognomy and the body. Following a roughly chronological order, this chapter shows how physiognomy, a divination technique, read the body for political purposes. In addition to this, the chapter also discusses philosophical reactions to this political interpretation of the body by looking at criticisms in the works of Mengzi, Xunzi, Dong Zhongshu, Wang Chong and Wang Fu. Chapter two, "Politics and the Body," discusses the political theory and practice of the body in early China. It begins with a description of the metaphorical meanings of the body in early political discourse, focusing on their role in defining the competitive relationship between the ruler and the minister, as well as their significance in defending the political and ethical legitimacy of the state. The use of the body as an actual political tool forms the second consideration of this chapter. I demonstrate how the political symbolism of the body weighted significantly in Han China's foreign policy making. Chapter three, "Ritual and the Body," deals with the issue of ritualization of the body in early China. The chapter is organized in accordance with two issues concerning the body in early ritual theories: ritualizing the body and embodying the ritual. I show how ritual trains the body to be acceptable to the society and how the ritualized body facilitates the maintenance of a hierarchical social order.
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    Reading Bodies: Aesthetics, Gender, and Family in the Eighteenth-Century Chinese Novel Guwangyan (Preposterous Words)
    (University of Oregon, 2016-10-27) Ye, Qing; Epstein, Maram
    This dissertation focuses on the Mid-Qing novel Guwangyan (Preposterous Words, preface dated, 1730s) which is a newly discovered novel with lots of graphic sexual descriptions. Guwangyan was composed between the publication of Jin Ping Mei (The Plum in the Golden Vase, 1617) and Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber, 1791). These two masterpieces represent sexuality and desire by presenting domestic life in polygamous households set within a larger social landscape. This dissertation explores the factors that shifted the literary discourse from the pornographic description of sexuality in Jin Ping Mei, to the representation of chaste love in Honglou meng. This dissertation can be divided into three parts. Part one: Chapter I and II introduce my main approach to interpret the text and the historical and aesthetic context of this novel. Chapter I introduces a large historical background of the late Ming and early Qing China from the aspects of the printing industry, gender politics and the literary criticism. I argue that the blurry boundaries between genres assigned by the May Fourth scholars do not fully satisfy the reading of Guwangyan. My reading, however, scrutinizes the textual body of Guwangyan to explore the material body and body politics demonstrated in the fictional world. Chapter II explains the meaning of the title of the text, the author, commentator, the commentary, and the current studies of Guwangyan. The second part, Chapter III and IV, illustrate a close-reading of the aesthetic body of the text. Chapter III proposes that Guwangyan is a well organized novel which has a carefully designed narrative structure and internal connections among chapters. Chapter IV demonstrates the importance of characterization in the novel. I argue that through a non-polarized yin-yang dichotomy and the yin-zhen contrast, the text demonstrates the uncertainty, transformation, and development of the characters and explores their complicated inner world. The third part, Chapter V and VI, explore two important subjects of Guwangyan, masculinity and the family. Guwangyan represents the male friendship and male same-sex relationship and how they can interact with men’s role in the public and private spheres. Chapter VI broadens the discussion of the family relationship in Guwangyan to include a much larger political landscape. I argue that the latter part of the novel establishes a significant contrast between a realistic representation of political disasters and an idealistic description of family and community unity.
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    The Qi Monistic Vision in Late Imperial Chinese Literature
    (University of Oregon, 2021-09-13) Kim, Jinsu; Epstein, Maram
    This dissertation examines the material and corporeal configurations of the moral self in the Chinese literary tradition from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Unlike the modern Western understanding of morality as an abstract valence produced by the interiority of a rational self, the Chinese fictional narratives of this period exhibit a shared propensity for exteriorizing morality in the material and corporeal realms. In terms of intellectual history, this physio-moral representation marks a reaction against the established earlier metaphysical system, known as Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism, which divided the cosmos between a transcendental, purely moral reality and a material counterpart susceptible to moral corruption. The narratives that I identify as illustrating this new monistic worldview reject dualism and present a physical world that is morally self-complete, in which the corporeal and the material regulate the moral order through their inherent mechanisms. The late imperial promotion of corporeality and materiality is indebted to a philosophical paradigm shift, later called qi monism. Qi monism challenged the earlier dualistic model by claiming that the phenomenological world possessed an intrinsic moral capacity. The monistic narratives that I examine go beyond being mere fictional adaptations of a Confucian discourse. They appropriate Buddhist and Daoist elements and shape them into a syncretic vision. The qi monistic vision as a literary concept challenges the current scholarly approach that reduces subjectivity to an inner psychic state. This dissertation argues that a holistic conception of Chinese subjectivity, in which the moral, the material, and the corporeal are inseparable, was more prevalent in late-imperial fiction than current scholarship recognizes.