Abstract: Printed collections of southern arias in late-Ming China often feature not only tune titles and lyrics of the arias but also seemingly unfathomable marks on or next to the lyrical words. The marks take various shapes, including circles, squares, teardrops, and dots, and, as a few scholars have pointed out, gesture toward the musicality of the arias (see, e.g., Carlitz 2005 and Lam 2005). However, none of the marks notates the exact melodies of the arias. For that reason, we as modern readers can no longer decipher from those collections the complete contours of the music despite the presence of "musical" indicators. Why did the late-Ming people who produced those collections choose not to notate the melodies, despite the availability of music notation systems? What can we understand about the late-Ming soundscape of southern arias through those marks? In this paper, I categorize the marks into two types of notations and propose "performative reading" s an analytical method. In excavating a singing culture of southern arias embedded in the notations, my performative readings illuminate how listening and singing experiences of southern arias in the late Ming transformed experiences of writing and reading them.

Abstract: This paper investigates how the relationship between music and words as communicative tools was understood and deployed by the practitioners of the qin (the seven-string zither) in late-imperial China. Qin song, a combination of qin playing and song singing, saw its heyday from the mid-Ming (1368–1644) to the early Qing (1644–1911). However, a debate about whether qin music should be accompanied with lyrics and/or singing also rose during this time, which eventually led to the decline of qin song from the eighteenth century onward. While previous scholars have considered this debate to be mainly about aesthetic preferences, I argue that what was more relevant was the broader Confucian discourse on the roles that music and words play in learning and communicating moral knowledge. By comparing these qin practitioners' arguments and musical works, especially different versions of "Guanju" in the qin repertoire, this paper depicts the chronological and theoretical development of four types of views that shaped the debate. My analysis of these four views suggests that both the rise and fall of qin song were results of the same intellectual trend, which may help us reconsider the late-imperial "philological turn" from a different perspective.

Abstract: This paper investigates two Ming-Dynasty plays about the life and career of Wang Yangming, the prominent Confucian philosopher and military general who captured the imagination of authors. These two plays are Shanyang Daoren's nanxi play The Story of Wang Yangming Quelling the Rebellion and Lü Tiancheng's chuanqi play The Story of the Divine Sword . They are the only two Ming plays about Wang Yangming whose titles survive today. Even though the full text of these two plays is no longer extant, by analyzing excerpts or descriptions of them from other anthological works, I demonstrate how Wang's political life informed the religious and popular imagination of him. While both plays, with their subject matter, draw from the tradition of "current affairs" literature, they both also feature elements that turn the description of Wang's life into a hagiography. I analyze how The Story of Wang Yangming Quelling the Rebellion shows a relationship between Wang and the Daoist immortal Xu Xun, demonstrating Wang's connection to the divine and his Confucian–Daoist linkage. The Story of the Divine Sword recollects Wang's military career, symbolized by a sword given to him in a dream, thus glorifying his motives and accomplishments. The existence of these two plays indicates not only the widespread popularity of Wang Yangming during the Ming but also his broad veneration.