Literary Migrations: Transformation in and out of Text in Qing and Early Republican China

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

This panel examines the transformations that occur when stories and images move across media. Exploring a host of late-imperial texts and authors—from Honglou meng to Frankenstein, from Feng Menglong to Li Yu—we ask what happens when characters, events, and objects travel in and out of text. What happens when voice transforms into text, novelistic character into photographic icon, performance into print, or monstrous fiction into newspaper fact? How do we untangle medium and message in these transmediations?

The first two papers explore transformations amidst the political events book-ending the Qing dynasty. Keulemans investigates how, after the fall of the Ming, oral gossip transformed into historical text, expanding the scope of private history while curtailing the authority of the imperial state. Focusing on the late Qing, Ho explores how, traveling from novel to newspaper account, Frankenstein’s monster was translated into China’s lion. In both papers, texts function to interweave competing discourses, whether through amalgamation or supplementation.

The other two papers explore transmediation as an expression of the Qing and early Republican markets for cultural products. Kile shows how the early-Qing entrepreneur, Li Yu, experimented with the medium of print to render lived experiences, such as theatrical performance, into print. Wu traces the reverse trajectory, investigating how a well-known icon from Honglou meng came to life only with the advent of celebrity culture, taking on a commercial life quite apart from the source text.

Together the papers highlight the range of the politics of literary migrations in this period.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizers

• Paize Keulemans, Princeton University

• S.E. Kile, University of Michigan

Chair

• Yasushi Oki, The University of Tokyo

Individual Presentations

• An Ear Witness to History: Feng Menglong’s Record of Rumor about the Year 1644 - Paize Keulemans, Princeton University

• From Frankenstein’s Creature to ‘Sleeping Lion’ China: The Transformation of a Haunting Monster and the Power of Falsehood in Chinese Context - Li-hsing Ho, National Tsinghua University

• Capturing an Early Modern Multimedia Experience: Li Yu’s Experiments at the Intersection of Print, Spatial Design, and Dramatic Performance - S.E. Kile, University of Michigan

• Burying Fallen Blossoms: Honglou meng Across Media - I-Hsien Wu, The City College of New York, CUNY

Discussant

• Jianyu Zhou, The Chinese University of Hong Kong