Full Description
Lutes and Marginality in Pre-Modern China traces the complex history of lutes as they moved from the far west into China, and how these instruments became linked to various forms of social, cultural, ethnic, and religious marginality within and at China's borders.
The book argues that the lute, a musical instrument that likely originated in the Near East or Central Asia, became a highly charged object replete with associations of ethnic and political identity, social status, and gender in China across the third to seventeenth centuries, and as such, offers a crucial vehicle for understanding interactions between the Chinese center and periphery. Using a richly interdisciplinary perspective that brings together music history, performance studies, archaeology, and art history, the author draws together the visual evidence for the history of Chinese lutes and analyzes the political and cultural dimensions of their depictions in art. In exploring the lute's reception across time and space, this book illuminates the shifting relationships between China and cultures along its frontier, as well as the dynamics of gender and social status within China's center.
Comprehensive in scope, Lutes and Marginality in Pre-Modern China offers new insights for scholars of pre-modern China, art history, archaeology, music history, ethnomusicology, and Silk Road and frontier studies.
Contents
1. Introduction and Methodology Part 1: Lutes from the Distant Margins 2. The Archaeology of Lutes in Western Asia 3. Archaeological Evidence for Lutes in Central and South Asia: Innovation and Diversity Part 2: Lutes and China's Border Regions 4. The Round-bodied lute (Ruanxian) in Chinese Funerary Art of the Third to Sixth Centuries 5. Lutes and the Deities that Play Them in Buddhist Art of Northwest China Part 3: From Periphery to Center 6. The Pipa and Marginalized Musicians in Six Dynasties to Tang 7. The Round-Bodied Lute (Ruanxian) in Tang Literature and Material Culture Part 4: Lutes, Gender, and Social Marginality 8. Lutes and Frontiers: Remembering and Constructing Wang Zhaojun and the Wusun Princess, The Five Dynasties through Ming 9. Wenren Strumming the Ruan: An Overview of Song to Early Qing Poetry and Paintings Depicting Scholars as Lute Players 10. Conclusion to Lutes and Marginality in Pre-Modern China
