Jan Stuart

Evelyn Sakakida Rawski

Despite their powerful presence and exquisite quality, Chinese ancestor portraits have never been studied as a genre. This illustrated text explores the artistic, historical, and religious significance of these paintings and places them in context with other types of commemorative portraiture. During the late Ming (1368-1644) and Quing (1644-1911) dynasties, full-length portraits of individual men and women came into vogue. These ancestor portraits were important objects of veneration, and the practice continued into the 20th century, when paintings were gradually replaced by photographs. The authors explore the works in depth, presenting a fascinating glimpse of Chinese life and culture and providing biographies of the sitters. Worshiping the Ancestors should appeal to connoisseurs of Chinese art and to all those interested in social history, portraiture, and devotional art.

Chinese Commemorative Portraits

Worshiping the Ancestors

Education and Popular Literacy in Ch'ing China

Andrew James Nathan

David George Johnson

Popular Culture in Late Imperial China

James L. Watson

Professor James L Watson

00 During the late imperial era (1500-1911), China, though divided by ethnic, linguistic, and regional differences at least as great as those prevailing in Europe, enjoyed a remarkable solidarity. What held Chinese society together for so many centuries? Some scholars have pointed to the institutional control over the written word as instrumental in promoting cultural homogenization; others, the manipulation of the performing arts. This volume, comprised of essays by both anthropologists and historians, furthers this important discussion by examining the role of death rituals in the unification of Chinese culture. During the late imperial era (1500-1911), China, though divided by ethnic, linguistic, and regional differences at least as great as those prevailing in Europe, enjoyed a remarkable solidarity. What held Chinese society together for so many centuries? Some scholars have pointed to the institutional control over the written word as instrumental in promoting cultural homogenization; others, the manipulation of the performing arts. This volume, comprised of essays by both anthropologists and historians, furthers this important discussion by examining the role of death rituals in the unification of Chinese culture.

Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China

Bell Yung

This volume of nine essays draws together leading scholars in anthropology, social history, musicology, and ethnomusicology to address the roles and functions of music in the Chinese ritual context. How does music, one of a constellation of essential performative elements in almost all rituals, empower an officiant, legitimate an officeholder, create a heightened state of awareness, convey a message, or produce a magical outcome, a transition, a transformation? After an introduction by the volume editors, Bell Yung proposes a theoretical framework for dealing with Chinese ritual sound. A group of three essays focuses on the music for rituals that create political and social legitimacy followed by a second group of essays considering the music associated with rites of passage. Two essays then deal with the music accompanying rituals of propitiation. In all these cases, music is seen to play a critical role, if not the core of the ritual.

Ritual Music in Chinese Context

Harmony and Counterpoint

Evelyn Sakakida Rawski

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