Overview

Playwriting in many forms flourished during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Shorter theatrical genres in particular offered playwrights opportunities for experimentation with both dramatic form and social critique. Despite their originality and wit, these short plays have been overshadowed by the lengthy masterpieces of the southern drama tradition. A Topsy-Turvy World presents English translations of shorter sixteenth-to-eighteenth-century plays, spotlighting a lesser-known side of Chinese drama. Satirical and often earthy, these mostly one-act plays depict deceit, dissembling, reversed gender roles, and sudden upending of fortunes. With zest and humor, they portray henpecked husbands, supercilious and lustful monks, all-too-human sage kings, disgruntled officials, and overreaching young scholars. These plays provide a glimpse of Chinese daily life and mores even as they question or subvert the boundaries of social, moral, and political order. Each translation is preceded by a short introduction that describes the play's author, context, formal qualities, and textual history. A Topsy-Turvy World offers a new view of a significant period in the development of the Chinese theatrical tradition and provides insight into the role of drama as cultural critique.

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9780231208963

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Studies of zaju plays of the Ming and Qing dynasties have for long been a neglected area in both China and elsewhere. For that reason, this anthology is a timely translation providing new materials not only for general readers interested in premodern Chinese zaju plays, but also for students and scholars to engage in further studies of the genre during the Ming and Qing period. -- Hongchu Fu, author of <i>Chinese Drama</i>

Studies of zaju plays of the Ming and Qing dynasties have for long been a neglected area in both China and elsewhere. For that reason, this anthology is a timely translation providing new materials not only for general readers interested in premodern Chinese zaju plays, but also for students and scholars to engage in further studies of the genre during the Ming and Qing period. -- Hongchu Fu, author of <i>Chinese Drama</i> A brilliant collection of rare and original works that provides a broad and varied purview of Chinese performance traditions. The dominant leitmotif of these translations is the ingenuity and audacity with which writers subvert convention while questioning the socio-political order. -- Regina Llamas, translator of <i>Top Graduate Zhang Xie: The Earliest Extant Chinese Southern Play</i>

Author Information

Wilt L. Idema is professor emeritus of Chinese literature at Harvard University. Wai-yee Li is the 1879 Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University. Stephen H. West is Louis Agassiz Emeritus Professor of Chinese, University of California, Berkeley, and Emeritus Foundation Professor of Chinese at Arizona State University.

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