Linda Rui Feng
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824841065
- eISBN:
- 9780824868062
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824841065.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
“Narrating Liminality and Transformation” examines the changing social and intellectual structures that engendered literati identities in the second half of the Tang. The cultural and aesthetic ...
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“Narrating Liminality and Transformation” examines the changing social and intellectual structures that engendered literati identities in the second half of the Tang. The cultural and aesthetic consequences of these changes shaped how literati conceived of the self as entities capable of initiation and advancement. As civil service examination recruitment began to mature in the second half of the Tang, a new notion of being established was being worked out in the cultural imagination. Its metaphors of transformation were being deployed in poetic language, but the nature and temporality of this process of transformation were more fully explored in extra-canonical narratives. Repeated literary figures point to a reconception of life between rungs on the ladder of success. In this reconception, Chang’an as a city and space served as the site for and mechanism of the transformations (real, imagined, or anticipated) at the center of a changing literati identity.Less
“Narrating Liminality and Transformation” examines the changing social and intellectual structures that engendered literati identities in the second half of the Tang. The cultural and aesthetic consequences of these changes shaped how literati conceived of the self as entities capable of initiation and advancement. As civil service examination recruitment began to mature in the second half of the Tang, a new notion of being established was being worked out in the cultural imagination. Its metaphors of transformation were being deployed in poetic language, but the nature and temporality of this process of transformation were more fully explored in extra-canonical narratives. Repeated literary figures point to a reconception of life between rungs on the ladder of success. In this reconception, Chang’an as a city and space served as the site for and mechanism of the transformations (real, imagined, or anticipated) at the center of a changing literati identity.
Linda Rui Feng
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824841065
- eISBN:
- 9780824868062
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824841065.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
During the Tang dynasty, the imperial capital of Chang’an shaped literati identity and the collective imagination through its new relationship to the empire’s most prolific writers. They came through ...
More
During the Tang dynasty, the imperial capital of Chang’an shaped literati identity and the collective imagination through its new relationship to the empire’s most prolific writers. They came through its fold as examination candidates, sojourners, prospective officials, and as participants in pageantries and contests showcasing literary talent. As the central site of examination culture and social transformation, Chang’an emerged in prose narratives with a distinctive and newly formed metropolitan consciousness. In spatially evocative tales and anecdotes featuring literati protagonists, narratives demonstrate the ways in which Chang’an generated new domains of experience and added new perceptual categories to the Tang cultural imagination. In particular, these narratives explore the role of the literati as routine travelers, the interplay between literary prowess and sexual license, and the possibilities for extra-official promotion and unorthodox forms of valuation and livelihood. Because these explorations are subsumed under metropolitan, situational knowledge, they bring to our attention an unprecedented interval of social, existential, and geographical mobility maintained and reinforced by the spatial contiguities of urban space. City of Marvel and Transformation conceptualizes this literary phenomenon, and argues that such narratives amend our understanding of men of letters in between social identities and institutions, as they straddled anonymity and legitimacy.Less
During the Tang dynasty, the imperial capital of Chang’an shaped literati identity and the collective imagination through its new relationship to the empire’s most prolific writers. They came through its fold as examination candidates, sojourners, prospective officials, and as participants in pageantries and contests showcasing literary talent. As the central site of examination culture and social transformation, Chang’an emerged in prose narratives with a distinctive and newly formed metropolitan consciousness. In spatially evocative tales and anecdotes featuring literati protagonists, narratives demonstrate the ways in which Chang’an generated new domains of experience and added new perceptual categories to the Tang cultural imagination. In particular, these narratives explore the role of the literati as routine travelers, the interplay between literary prowess and sexual license, and the possibilities for extra-official promotion and unorthodox forms of valuation and livelihood. Because these explorations are subsumed under metropolitan, situational knowledge, they bring to our attention an unprecedented interval of social, existential, and geographical mobility maintained and reinforced by the spatial contiguities of urban space. City of Marvel and Transformation conceptualizes this literary phenomenon, and argues that such narratives amend our understanding of men of letters in between social identities and institutions, as they straddled anonymity and legitimacy.
Linda Rui Feng
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824841065
- eISBN:
- 9780824868062
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824841065.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
The introduction explains the important relationship between Chang’an and Tang literati writers, arguing that they serve as intermediary between the city and text. It gives a brief contextualized ...
More
The introduction explains the important relationship between Chang’an and Tang literati writers, arguing that they serve as intermediary between the city and text. It gives a brief contextualized introduction to the Chang’an as both an imperial capital and a site for collective life. It discusses the nature and provenance of the book’s major textual sources, arguing for a need to reconceptualize and reimagine these texts as workings of the cultural imagination, rather than confined to bibliographic categories and regulated within generic boundaries. It also introduces the theoretical models used throughout the book, as related to the concepts of liminality, spatial practice, and the production of space.Less
The introduction explains the important relationship between Chang’an and Tang literati writers, arguing that they serve as intermediary between the city and text. It gives a brief contextualized introduction to the Chang’an as both an imperial capital and a site for collective life. It discusses the nature and provenance of the book’s major textual sources, arguing for a need to reconceptualize and reimagine these texts as workings of the cultural imagination, rather than confined to bibliographic categories and regulated within generic boundaries. It also introduces the theoretical models used throughout the book, as related to the concepts of liminality, spatial practice, and the production of space.
