The many shapes of medieval Chinese plays : How texts are transformed to meet the needs of actors, spectators, censors, and readers

When Voltaire's L'Orphelin de la Chine (1755) is mentioned nowadays in general histories of Western theater, it is not because of its eminent literary qualities, even though, like practically everything by Voltaire, the play is written with wit and flair. It is rather mentioned for its influence on one particular aspect of performance: costume. L'Orphelin de la Chine was in its own day an extremely popular play that was performed, in French and in translation, all over Europe by actors and actresses in "authentic costume." Until well into the eighteenth century, actors in tragedy performed all plays in a limited set of costumes, but in L'Orphelin de la Chine they tried to dress as Chinese--to the best of their knowledge. As with every change in performance practice, this daring innovation had its detractors at the time. One Dutch observer noted that the heavily perspiring performers of the Dutch version of Voltaire's tragedy in their oriental draperies looked more like "Armenian merchants" than anything Chinese (Hartnoll 1968:158-59, Worp 1908:268).Issue title: Performance Literature II

Law in Chinese Literature

The Judgment (pan 判) as a Genre of Literature Following a brief discussion of my disqualifications as a scholar of Chinese law I will discuss the “judgment (pan 判)” as a genre of literature. My starting point will be the negative assessment of the genre by Arthur Waley in his The Life and Times of Po Chü-i (1949). Basing myself on the growing body of recent Chinese scholarship on the genre, I will try to show that Waley’s characterization of the genre is not so much based on the judgments by ..

Van ambtenaar tot vrouwengek : de posthume loopbaan van Cui Hao (ca. 695-758?) /

Afscheidscollege uitgesproken aan de Universiteit Leiden, gehouden op vrijdag 27 augustus 199