LI YU AND CHINESE POP CULTURE

Catalog description

Seventeenth-century China witnessed a booming of what we now will call pop culture, thanks to increases in literacy and the rise of consumer culture. This course introduces students to a representative and unique author of that time, Li Yu, and his many commercially successful works, including novels, play scripts, and a DIY manual. We will delve into the seventeenth-century Chinese pop cultural environment, understand the tastes and concerns of Li's contemporaries, and dissect the interwoven relationships between novels, plays, and various aesthetic practices such as garden construction and performance training. 002129