Western Chamber Research Articles

안악 3호분 벽화의 중원 색채와 그 의의

The main content of the mural painting of Anak Tomb No. 3, a tomb which belongs to the emergent stage of Goguryeo mural tombs, is the life of the tomb owner in his life. It is the same with the mural tombs of China from the Eastern-Han Dynasty. Anak Tomb No. 3 is quite similar to the mural tombs of central China and Liaoyang in terms of the structure of the tomb, as well as the composition and content of the mural painting. Various prestige goods such as a type of cart (通幰車), drapes and a tent (帷帳), a folding screen and flat bench (屛榻), a type of pole (節), a type of folding fan (麈尾扇) depicted on the mural painting of Anak Tomb No.3 represent the official rank, written in black ink on the mural painting of this tomb’s owner, and these contents are the same as those of the mural tombs of central China which are of the same level. This presence of objects originating from central China found on the mural painting of Anak Tomb No.3 and Deokheungri tomb indicates that the Daedong River Estuary basin (which includes the Pyongyang area) maintained a different social and cultural aspect from the Jian area, until the Goguryeo capital was relocated from Jian to Pyongyang in 427. There is a view that Dong Su was not the owner of the tomb, but a gate guard (門吏) written as “Jang Ha Dok” (帳下督) on the wall of the entrance of the western chamber. “Jang Ha Dok” is a subordinate official belonging to the first to third rank of the Wei-Jin Period. According to an ink handwriting record, Dong Su’s rank corresponds to the second to third official rank of the Wei-Jin Period. Therefore, Dong Su cannot be regarded as “Jang Ha Dok”. A type of pole called “jul” (節) on the mural painting reflects the office of “Sa Ji Jul” (使持節) written in black ink. In addition, the oxcart with the tomb owner is a type of cart called Tong Hun Gu (通幰車), which the second to third official rank rode. Therefore, it is most reasonable to regard the owner of Anak Tomb No. 3 as Dong Su, as is written in black ink.

A Corpus-Based Study on the Comparison and Value of the Translations of the Romance of the Western Chamber

A Corpus-Based Study on the Comparison and Value of the Translations of the Romance of the Western Chamber

Dame Wang’s Dumplings: Mediating the Obscene in Manchu Translations of Erotic Literature at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century

Abstract This article examines the surprising attention to taboo works of Chinese erotic literature within the corpus of early Manchu literary translations, focusing on the Manchu interpretations of Jinpingmei (The plum in the golden vase), Xixiang ji (The story of the western wing), and Rouputuan (The carnal prayer mat). The Qing court is well known to have sponsored translations of core works of the Chinese classical and historical tradition, while simultaneously banning texts perceived as heterodox, lascivious, or politically sensitive. A lively engagement among Manchu commercial publishers with the literary tradition, including vernacular novels and plays, highlights the broader reading habits of the early Qing Manchu reader in practice. In mediating erotic material for this new audience, translators employed a variety of interpretive choices, ranging from expurgation to the opposite extreme of hyper-sexualization. This study situates these translation practices within the broader Manchu justifications of reading this material, shifting our attention from the conventional representation of Manchu literary repression.

Gender Differences, Authority’s Discredibility, and Political Crisis: A Comparative Reading of Wang Shifu’s Xixiang Ji and Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm

Gender Differences, Authority’s Discredibility, and Political Crisis: A Comparative Reading of Wang Shifu’s Xixiang Ji and Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm

The Translation and the Dissemination of The Romance of the Western Chamber in France

The Translation and the Dissemination of The Romance of the Western Chamber in France

A Couple of Soles: A Comic Play from Seventeenth-Century China

A Couple of Soles: A Comic Play from Seventeenth-Century China

Letture proibite e parole in codice: Storia dell’Ala Occidentale , un’opera drammaturgica nel romanzo cinese Il Sogno della Camera Rossa

The 18 th -century novel The Dream of the Red Chamber ( Honglou meng ) is one of the most important narrative masterpieces of Chinese literature. Despite the numerous studies on this work − that is an encyclopedic summa of an entire culture − the role of the theatre in the novel has not been sufficiently deepened. This paper explores how the young protagonists of Honglou meng use The Story of the Western Wing , a comedy that is still fundamental to the Chinese artistic heritage today. The two teenagers in the novel secretly admire the drama characters and their courageous way of living passions. These characters have the subversive and maieutic function of providing essential words for a dialogue that allows the adolescents to emotionally overcome the conditioning of an environment characterized by a rigid and oppressive Neo-Confucian education. Some issues about the consideration suffered by sentimental dramaturgy − in an imperial context where the theatre was the centre of debates on which themes and behaviours should be censored as corrupting costumes − emerge in the background of this analysis.

Comparison of the aesthetics of chamber music of China and the West

Chamber music attracts the audience with its wide range, diverse sounds, and rich expressiveness. Even if it is still the same chamber music, the influence of geography, ethnicity, and culture, styles and varieties of Chinese and Western chamber music are widely different. By comparing pieces of Chinese chamber music with the Western chamber music, one can find out that Chinese chamber music focuses on the expression of the artistic concept through the melody, while the Western chamber music gives more attention to logic and festive genres. Within the Chinese musical aesthetics, influenced by Laozi’s Tao Te Ching, there’s an idea that «music has in it neither grief nor joy», saying that music itself is not emotional, and is objective, it is just an incentive and an instrument of emotions. In Western countries, the art of music gives attention to the technique, and considers music as a real and important substance, and tends to a more «autonomous» point of view. The authors of this research give special attention to the analysis of aesthetic differences between Chinese and Western music, as well as creative differences caused by the influence of aesthetic differences. In view of these facts the authors formulate the conclusion that the music of China and the West should be compared based on the ideas about aesthetics and their detailed analysis. The authors consider the typical features and characteristics of the music aesthetics of the West and China, their diversity and influence on the creative work in chamber music, hold a comparative research, and offer new models and directions of development. The main theme of traditional Chinese chamber music is poetry, and the arrangement is more free, and focuses on conveying the artistic idea. The Western chamber music has a strict creative routine, and gives more attention to the characteristics of music itself.

Zhu Suchen was not the first person responsible for the Romance of the Western Chamber

Zhu Suchen was not the first person responsible for the Romance of the Western Chamber

Interactive Evaluation of a Music Preprocessing Scheme for Cochlear Implants Based on Spectral Complexity Reduction.

Music is difficult to access for the majority of CI users as the reduced dynamic range and poor spectral resolution in cochlear implants (CI), amongst others constraints, severely impair their auditory perception. The reduction of spectral complexity is therefore a promising means to facilitate music enjoyment for CI listeners. We evaluate a spectral complexity reduction method for music signals based on principal component analysis that enforces spectral sparsity, emphasizes the melody contour and attenuates interfering accompanying voices. To cover a wide range of spectral complexity reduction levels a new experimental design for listening experiments was introduced. It allows CI users to select the preferred level of spectral complexity reduction interactively and in real-time. Ten adult CI recipients with post-lingual bilateral profound sensorineural hearing loss and CI experience of at least 6 months were enrolled in the study. In eight consecutive sessions over a period of 4 weeks they were asked to choose their preferred version out of 10 different complexity settings for a total number of 16 recordings of classical western chamber music. As the experiments were performed in consecutive sessions we also studied a potential long term effect. Therefore, we investigated the hypothesis that repeated engagement with music signals of reduced spectral complexity leads to a habituation effect which allows CI users to deal with music signals of increasing complexity. Questionnaires and tests about music listening habits and musical abilities complemented these experiments. The participants significantly preferred signals with high spectral complexity reduction levels over the unprocessed versions. While the results of earlier studies comprising only two preselected complexity levels were generally confirmed, this study revealed a tendency toward a selection of even higher spectral complexity reduction levels. Therefore, spectral complexity reduction for music signals is a useful strategy to enhance music enjoyment for CI users. Although there is evidence for a habituation effect in some subjects, such an effect has not been significant in general.

Interlingual = Intercultural in Kayoi Komachi/Komachi Visited: A Noh Chamber Opera

In their intercultural production Kayoi Komachi/Komachi Visited, creators Colleen Lanki and Farshid Samandari experimented with mixing Japanese noh and Western chamber opera, blending noh and opera music, classical Japanese and English. For this noh opera, which hybridized theatrical styles through language, interlingualism was key to its interculturality.

Online Audio-Visual Source Association for Chamber Music Performances

In audio-visual recordings of music performances, visual cues from instrument players exhibit good temporal correspondence with the audio signals and the music content. These correspondences provide useful information for estimating source associations, i.e., for identifying the affiliation between players and sound sources or score parts. In this paper, we propose a computational system that models audio-visual correspondences to achieve source association for Western chamber music ensembles including strings, woodwind, and brass instruments. Through its three modules, the system models three typical types of correspondences between 1) body motion (e.g., bowing for string instruments and sliding for trombone) and note onsets, 2) finger motion (e.g., fingering for most woodwind and brass instruments) and note onsets, and 3) vibrato hand motion (e.g., fingering hand rolling for string instruments) and pitch fluctuations. Although the three modules are designed for estimating associations for different instruments, the overall system provides a universal framework for all common melodic instruments in Western chamber ensembles. The framework automatically and adaptively integrates the three modules, without requiring prior knowledge of the instrument types. The system operates in an online fashion, i.e., associations are updated as the audio-visual stream progresses. We evaluate the system on ensembles with different instruments and polyphony, ranging from duets to quintets. Results demonstrate that association accuracy increases as the duration of video excerpts increases. For string quintets, the accuracy is over 90% from just a 5-second video excerpt, while for woodwind, brass, and mixed-instrument quintets, a similar accuracy can be reached after processing 30 seconds of video. The result of the proposed framework is promising and enables novel applications such as interactive audio-visual music editing and auto-whirling camera in concerts.

Story of the Eastern Chamber: Dilemmas of Vernacular Language and Political Authority in Eighteenth-Century Chosŏn

Abstract The earliest extant playscript in Korea stands as an enigma. It is an anonymous work written to celebrate a wedding arranged by King Chŏngjo. Called Story of the Eastern Chamber, the play evokes not only the Chinese Story of the Western Chamber through titular reference but also the Chinese vernacular tradition as a whole. Written entirely in Chinese characters, the text weaves vernacular Korean words into the syntax of Chinese baihua vernacular, an unusual form which upsets the conventional diglossic binary of literary Chinese (hanmun) and vernacular Korean (hangŭl). This essay situates the text in a late Chosŏn discourse of linguistic difference marked by pronounced anxieties about the temporal and spatial contingency of language. Some late Chosŏn writers, including the text’s putative author, Yi Ok, embraced difference to carve out a localized literary space in Chosŏn Korea. For King Chŏngjo, it threatened the textual foundation of royal authority. Eastern Chamber spoke to these dilemmas by imagining a linguistic space where vernacular Korean usage could be represented as a literary language in the Chinese script, reconciling kingly authority with local specificity.

A Comparison between the Images of Cui Yingying and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet and The Romance of the Western Chamber are both great monuments that eulogize love and break through the feudalistic constraints in human history. The previous research usually focuses on the artistic aesthetics and thought and culture of the drama, and little has discussed about the differences and similarities of Cui Yingying and Juliet and its causes. Both Cui Yingying and Juliet are pioneers, who have outstanding appearance and revolt against feudalism of an era, but after careful reading, we can see that the former one is passionate and keyed-up while the later one is periphrastic and cautious. Appreciating two characters together to figure out the reasons behind the differences helps us to comprehend the similarities and differences between Chinese and foreign literature better, at the same time to perceive the marks of western and Chinese culture that engrave on the soul of the two characters.

A Study of Wang Shifu and the Four Great Scholars of Yuan Drama

Wang Shifu and his Romance of the West Chamber have been highly valued and concerned since ancient times, but Wang Shifu had not been included in the "Four Great Scholars of Yuan Drama". There have been many controversies among the drama writers in Ming and Qing dynasties, and the reasons deserve further exploration. Nevertheless, Wang Shifu's position in the history of drama would not be questioned, nor would it prevent the Romance of the West Chamber from becoming classic. In this paper, by means of comparative study, the author combs the process of Wang Shifu becoming a classic in the context of the history of opera development, and the causes of the classicization of The Romance of the Western Chamber.

This Fearful Object of Desire: On the Interpretation of a Bad Dream in Wang Shifu’s Story of the Western WingGlossary

‪Le reve de Zhang Sheng, a la fin du quatrieme livre du zaju des Yuan Le Pavillon de l’ouest (Xixiang ji), de Wang Shifu, est rarement etudie. Il concentre pourtant des informations essentielles sur le rapport du heros et de l’heroine et ses contradictions, dans ce qui constitue la reference cardinale de l’imaginaire amoureux a l’epoque premoderne, dans les derniers siecles de l’empire. Cette scene de reve est le fruit de toute une histoire textuelle, et exercera une influence durable sur d’autres textes. L’interpretation qu’en fait Jin Shengtan, qui peut se deceler a travers son edition de la piece, au xvii e siecle, est parfaitement compatible avec une lecture moderne telle qu’on peut la faire a partir de Jacques Lacan, avec sa theorie du desir, du sujet et de l’Autre.‪

少山堂本：一個今存最早的《西廂記》“初印初評”本

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.
 萬曆七年少山堂《新刻考正古本大字出像釋義北西廂》二卷，現藏日本御茶水圖書館成簣堂文庫。少山堂本有眉批和少量旁批。該書不僅是現存最早的《西廂記》評點本，也是今存“最早的中國戲曲評點本”，在《西廂記》傳播史乃至中國戲曲史上具有非常重要的價值。少山堂本很可能是一個“原刻初印”本，也是一個“初評”本，在正文和批語兩方面實爲今存多種明刊《西廂記》之初祖。具體而言，少山堂本直接影響到徐士範本，又經過徐士範本間接影響到熊龍峰刊余瀘東訂本、三槐堂本等明刊《西廂記》評點本。
 An edition of the Xixiang ji (Romance of the West Wing) published by Shaoshan tang in 1579, titled Xinke kaozheng ben dazi chuxiang shiyi bei Xixiang (A newly engraved redacted edition of the north edition of The Xixiang ji in large print, with illustrations and annotations) in two fascicles is preserved in Naruhodo Bunko of the Ochanomizu Library in Japan. This Shaoshan tang edition contains some “eyebrow” notes and a few notes next to the text. This edition is not only the earliest extant commentated edition of the Xixiang ji but also “the earliest extant commentated edition of Chinese dramatic texts; therefore, it is very significant in the circulation of the Xixiang ji and even in the history of classical Chinese drama. The Shaoshan tang edition is most likely the “first cut and first print” edition and the “first commentated” version, which contains the urtext and commentaries on which the extant Ming versions were based. In particular, the Shaoshan tang edition had a direct influence on the edition of Xu Shifan, who continued to exert influence on other Ming editions such as the one done by Yu Ludong and published by Xiong Longfeng, and the one with commentaries published by Sanhuai tang.

Staging An Elite Reading Community: Jin Shengtan’s Commentary on The Western Wing

<p>本文擬將金聖歎評《第六才子書西廂記》放置於閱讀史脈絡中，考察金批《西廂》中有關「錦繡才子」之戲劇性展演。金批《西廂》一反傳統的「發憤著書論」以及作者寄身翰墨以期不朽的文化心理，強調古人／作者之不可知，將文本生產與天才作者的英雄人格相剝離，轉而將創作、閱讀主體共同放置於茫茫天地間洶湧萬世的時間潮流中。妙文成為「普天下萬世錦繡才子」構成的菁英讀者群體與聖歎間通過儀式性的情感交流以及「平心斂氣」的身體體驗得以從天下萬世人人心中「偷取」出的公共之寶。如此立論，看似與二十世紀後結構主義的「作者已死」觀念相貫通，實際卻植根於聖歎作為十七世紀江南才子，藉木刻本為公共平臺，對社會性閱讀理想化的構想。本文通過情感紐帶、身體體驗、洞察力培養三方面考察聖歎展演的社會性閱讀之內涵──其中折射的明清之際文人審美趣味既承接儒者身體力行的閱讀功夫，又展現出晚明醫藥話語和禪、儒合一的專業性知識體系。有趣的是，金聖歎對「錦繡才子」的訴求在清代的接受史中不敵刻書家、戲曲家對「才子」概念的慣性理解。然而聖歎的「才子觀」因其突破時空限制，且以共同的倫理、文化、文本記憶為界定，具有超越地域、政治實體、身分的開放性。由此可見金聖歎對預期讀者理想化建構之影響值得放置於東亞語境內進一步考察。</p> <p> </p><p>This paper situates Jin Shengtan’s The Sixth Genius Book: The Western Wing in the context of the history of reading. In his tremendously popular commentary on the romantic play, The Story of the Western Wing, Jin defines the text as an artifact that captures the aesthetics of a single moment that is utterly unique and incapable of reproduction. Any writer does not possess his text once it materializes into marvelous writings between Heaven and earth (tiandi miaowen), as these are treasures of talented men whose brilliance of learning renders the patterns of nature as the text’s simulacrum. I will examine how Jin uses this definition of the literary text to promote his understanding of reading as a social activity that entails emotional, embodied, and cognitive experiences that fuse subjective identities of the author, the reader, and the commentator in a virtual community of reader-writers sharing brocade-like minds (jinxiu caizi). Jin’s theory of reading may resonate with the Poststructuralist perspective on the death of the author—a text is always already embedded in a tissue of signs; to impose an author is to impose a limit on that text. Yet Jin’s anticipation of the reader’s community is premised on a pursuit of those with equal intellectual capacities. There is therefore no “reading public” within Jin’s purview. Ironically, the publishers and editors who produced no fewer than ninety editions based on Jin’s commentary did not respond well with Jin’s call for a reading community. To fully appreciate the significance of the sociology of reading staged in Jin’s commentary, we need to look beyond commercial printing in Qing China and at Chosŏn Korea, where men of letters were inspired by Jin’s commentary to re-evaluate the acts of reading and writing.</p> <p> </p>

Intertextuality Between Yingying Zhuan and Xixiang Ji

Intertextuality Between Yingying Zhuan and Xixiang Ji

A Study on the Narrative Transformation and Stage Performability of Za Ju “Hong Li Hua” & “Xi Xiang Ji”

A Study on the Narrative Transformation and Stage Performability of Za Ju “Hong Li Hua” & “Xi Xiang Ji”