Entertainment in Containment: Courtesans and Space in the Game of Romance in Taiping guangji and Yijian zhi
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This thesis studies the lives of Chinese courtesans within the space assigned to them, as portrayed in courtesan-related stories in Taiping guangji and Yijian zhi, two voluminous collections of stories compiled in the Song Dynasty, each of which has the reputation of being an encyclopedia of life in premodern China. Among a corpus of approximately 124 stories that mention courtesan from Taiping guangji and 81 from Yijian zhi, this thesis pays special attention to ìHuo Xiaoyu Zhuanî (the Story of Huo Xiaoyu) and ìLi Wa Zhuanî (the Story of Huo Xiaoyu), which by themselves provide note-worthy details exemplifying the relation between space and romance. To better illustrate the history and definition of courtesans, and explore specific themes, examples from beyond the two aforementioned collections are also eclectically drawn from premodern Chinese literary texts from different periods, including poems and lyrics, bi ji stories, and novels. The nature of the occupation of a courtesan is to provide entertainment. This particular kind of entertainment often requires separate space. In a narrow sense, the space of a courtesan is the place in which they live and work, sometimes love, and when betrayed, hate and plot revenge. In a broader sense, the space of a courtesan is constructed by the courtesanís value in menís hearts, position in society, identity in relation to marriage, and symbolic function in literature. The contained space of courtesans is also an indicator of womenís assigned roles and space in menís comfort zone in premodern China, which can be perceived through literary phenomena intertwined with male imaginations and social realities.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | March 2018 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Huang, Xiaoyi | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary advisor | Zhou, Yiqun | |
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Stanford Global Studies, Center for East Asian Studies |
Subjects
| Subject | East Asian Studies |
|---|---|
| Subject | Premodern Chinese Literature |
| Subject | Taiping guangji |
| Subject | Yijian zhi |
| Subject | Space |
| Subject | Courtesan |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
Huang, Xiaoyi. (2018). Entertainment in Containment: Courtesans and Space in the Game of Romance
in Taiping guangji and Yijian zhi. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/fc539vk7532
Collection
Stanford Center for East Asian Studies Thesis Collection
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- Contact
- xiaoyih@stanford.edu
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