Playing with Plays: Drama and Early Modern Chinese Media Ecologies

Yinghui Wu, Ph.D. (2014), Washington University in St. Louis, is Associate Professor of Chinese at University of California, Los Angeles. She has published on print culture, popular culture, and intermediality in early modern China. She is also a co-editor of Emotions in Non-Fictional Representations of the Individual, 1600-1850: Between East and West (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).

• AcknowledgementsList of Figures XAbbreviationsIntroduction1 Plays and Media2 Media Studies as an Approach to Early Modern Chinese Drama3 Media, Remediation, Media Ecology4 Playing with Plays5 Chapter Overview1 Remediating Li Zhi for Drama1 Names That Became Brands2 The Media Environment of Drama Publishing3 Affective Immersion and the Experience of Immediacy4 Mosuo and the Experience of Hypermediacy5 The Inevitability of Mediation6 Virtual Theater on the Margins of Plays7 Conclusion2 Hypermedial Illustration1 Drama Illustrations in the Late Ming: Trends and Shifts2 A Social Typology of Figures3 “Figure-in-Landscape”: Size, Proportion, and the Mode of Viewing4 Three Types of “Figure-in-Landscape”: Traveler, Fisherman, and Female Performer5 Conclusion3 The Media Ecology of Qu Singing1 The Protean Culture of Qu2 Qu: the Legitimate Heir to a Poetic-Musical Tradition3 The Social World of Qu Connoisseurship: between Text and Experience4 The Interplay among Qu Singing, Publishing, and Connoisseurship5 A Connoisseur in the Making: Ling Mengchu and Publishing6 Constraints by the Singing Culture7 A Connoisseur in the Making: Ling Mengchu and Qu Performance8 Conclusion4 Media as Messages in The Sixth Book of Genius1 The Medium for the Message, or the Medium as the Message2 The “Multimedia” Sixth Book of Genius3 The Medium of Spirit Writing: Affect and Efficacy4 The Medium of Buddhist Sermon: between Orality and Writing5 Reading Xixiang ji and the Invocation of a Spirit Medium6 Sermonizing in the Commentary7 The Medium of Gong’an Dialogues: Orality and Performativity8 Gong’an-like Dialogues in the Commentary9 Conclusion5 Hypermediacy in Eight-Legged Essays on Plays1 Xi and Youxi, Theater and Gameplay2 The Eight-Legged Essay as Gameplay3 Playful Eight-Legged Essays in Print4 Eight-Legged Essays on Drama: (Not) Playing by the Rules5 Qing and Hypermediacy in Qian Shu’s Elegant Taste6 Playing with Moral Passion in Eight-Legged Essays on Pipa ji7 ConclusionEpilogueAppendix 1: Selected Playful Eight-Legged Essays on Xixiang jiAppendix 2: Playful Eight-Legged Essays on Pipa jiBibliographyIndex