Making Texts in Villages: Textual Production in Rural China During the Ming-Qing Period

This dissertation uses the textual materials found in several villages in Pingnan, northeastern Fujian, from 2008 to 2011, to examine the use of texts in rural China during the imperial period. The discussion focuses on the texts produced by local people and used locally. The central theme of the dissertation is to contextualize the rise of textual culture and the spread literate mentality in a marginal society, and explore the relationship between text and society. The dissertation consists of two major parts. Part I covers the period when Pingnan was the northern part of Gutian County, and Part II covers the period around and after the establishment of Pingnan County in 1734. Part I consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 traces the early textual practices in northern Gutian during the Song-Yuan period, and suggests a local perspective of textual culture. Chapter 2 discusses the establishment of official documentation system in the early Ming and its influence on local communities and the production of local texts. Chapter 3 uses a case of a rising family in the late Ming to illustrate the use of textual construction to promote one's social and cultural status. Part II consists of four chapters and each chapter investigates the use of texts in one realm of village life. Chapter 4 starts with the penetration of genealogy compilation and the transformation of social structure. Chapter 5 discusses the political background for the proliferation of stone stelae and other "texts for public display." Chapter 6 examines various kinds of textual materials used in economic activities, from managing lineage properties to land-exchanges and long-distant trades. Chapter 7 explores the creation within the transmission of ritual texts and their responses to the changing requirement of ritual performance. In the conclusion, this dissertation discusses the significance of textual culture in the general transformations and social integrations in northeastern Fujian, and also reconsiders the question of "literacy" in the context of local society.East Asian Languages and Civilization

A War of Words: The Forms and Functions of Voice-Over in the American World War II Film — An Interdisciplinary Analysis

Aside from being American World War II films, what else do the following films have in common? The Big Red One; Hacksaw Ridge; Harts War; Mister Roberts; Stalag 17; and The Thin Red Line — all have voice-over in them. These, and hundreds of other war films have voice-overs that are sometimes the thoughts of a fearful soldier; the wry observations of a participant-observer; or the declarations of all-knowing authoritative figures. There are voice-overs blasted out through a ships PA system; as the reading of a heart-breaking letter; or as the words of a dead comrade, heard again in the mind of a haunted soldier. This thesis questions why is voice-over such a recurring phenomenon in these films? Why is it conveyed in so many different forms? What are the terms for those different forms? What are their narrative functions? A core component of this thesis is a new taxonomy of the six distinct forms of voice-over: acousmatic, audioemic, epistolary, objective, omniscient, and subjective. However, the project is more than a structuralist taxonomy that merely serves to identify, and define those forms. It is also a close examination of their narrative functions beyond the unimaginative trope that voice-over in war films is simply a convenient storytelling device. Through interdisciplinarity — combined with a realist framework — I probe the correlations between: the conditions, codification, and suppression of speech within the U.S. military, and the manifestations of that experience through the cinematic device, and genre convention of voice-over. In addition, I present a radically new interpretation of the voice-overs in The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998) as being both a choric meta-memorial to James Jones; and a Greek tragedy — with its replication of the stagecraft of Aeschylus, in its use of the cosmic frame, and the inclusion of a collective character, which I have named ‘The Chorus of Unknown Soldiers’. The overall result is a more logical, and nuanced explanation of the forms, functions, and prevalent use of voice-over in the American World War II film

LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volume

LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volum