Through a Forest of Chancellors : : Fugitive Histories in Liu Yuan's Lingyan ge, an Illustrated Book from Seventeenth-Century Su-zhou / / Anne Burkus-Chasson

• Superior document: Harvard University Studies in East Asian Law ; 66
• VerfasserIn: Burkus-Chasson, Anne,
• TeilnehmendeR: Liu, Yuan, active 1668.
• Place / Publishing House: Boston : : Harvard University Asia Center,, 2010.; Leiden; , Boston : : BRILL,, 2010.
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Harvard University Studies in East Asian Law ; 66.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource.

Liu Yuan's Lingyan ge, a woodblock-printed book from 1669, re-creates a portrait gallery that memorialized 24 vassals of the early Tang court. Liu accompanied each figure, presented under the guise of a bandit, with a couplet; the poems, written in various scripts, are surrounded by marginal images that allude to a contemporary novel. Religious icons supplement the portrait gallery. Liu's re-creation is fraught with questions. This study examines the dialogues created among the texts and images in Lingyan ge from multiple perspectives. Analysis of the book's materialities demonstrates how Lingyan ge embodies, rather than reflects, the historical moment in which it was made. Liu unveiled and even dramatized the interface between manuscript and printed book in Lingyan ge. Authority over the book's production is negotiated, asserted, overturned, and reinstated. Use of pictures to construct a historical argument intensifies this struggle. Anne Burkus-Chasson argues that despite a general epistemological shift toward visual forms of knowledge in the seventeenth century, looking and reading were still seen as being in conflict. This conflict plays out among the leaves of Liu Yuan's book.

Table of Contents

The composition of the book. The gallery of portraits re-created -- Liu Yuan's cover leaf -- Prefatory autographs -- The preface writers license the pictorial book -- The list of contents -- Lingyan ge, the historical site -- Composing the vassal's figure -- Unordinary images -- Physiognomic fantasies -- Costumes in disarray -- Under the guise of bandits -- The act of turning the leaf -- Structures of the book -- Re-reading Du Fu -- The damask at leaf's edge -- The publication of the book. Painter, publisher, reader-viewer : whose gallery? -- The "social drama" of the Ming-Qing transition -- Liu Yuan and Tong Pengnian -- A model for community : echoing voices among the preface writers -- Climbing Yingzhou : Wu Weiye's response -- Vexations of passage -- Variant endings -- Maxims, furtively impressed -- In the hands of all the masters -- From manuscript to printed book --- Appendix. Liu Yuan's Lingyan ge, with annotated translations.