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Pre-Modern China Lecture Series: “A Week in Jiangnan, on a Middle-Class Salary: Some thoughts on Zhang Dai and Li Yu”

11/25/2019 @ 3:30 pm - 6:30 pm

Pre-Modern China Lecture Series:

“A Week in Jiangnan, on a Middle-Class Salary: Some thoughts on Zhang Dai and Li Yu ”

Lecturer:  Tina Lu, Colonel John Trumbull Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures, Head of Pauli Murray College, Yale University

Abstract: “I am poor.” “I am rich.” “I am middling.” These statements (which have crossed from premodern China to Reddit) are not quantitative assertions.  If they have something to do with the political economy, they are mostly rhetorical positions—and as such within the scope of inquiry for literary scholars.  I will be examining this particular rhetorical position in two mid-seventeenth century texts: Zhang Dai’s Taoan mengyi (late 1640s) and Li Yu’s Xianqing ouji (1671), both of which assert that the relevance of their writing has something to do with their own social positioning.  Both are profoundly concerned with the idea of product differentiation (what is appropriate and for whom).  I want to consider the idea of literary style itself as one of these differentiated products.

Details

Date:
11/25/2019
Time:
3:30 pm - 6:30 pm

Venue

403 Kent Hall
1140 Amsterdam Ave.
New York, NY 10027 United States
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Phone:
212-854-5027
Website:
ealac.columbia.edu