TY - BOOK ID - 78644822 TI - The spatiality of emotion in early modern China : from dreamscapes to theatricality PY - 2018 SN - 0231547587 9780231547581 9780231187947 0231187947 PB - New York, NY : Columbia University Press, DB - UniCat KW - Chinese drama KW - Space perception in literature KW - Emotions in literature. KW - Chinese literature. KW - History and criticism. KW - Emotions in literature KW - S16/0190 KW - S16/0195 KW - History and criticism KW - China: Literature and theatrical art--Literary criticism KW - China: Literature and theatrical art--Thematic studies UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:78644822 AB - Emotion takes place. Rather than an interior state of mind in response to the outside world, emotion per se is spatial, at turns embedding us from without, transporting us somewhere else, or putting us ahead of ourselves. In this book, Ling Hon Lam gives a deeply original account of the history of emotions in Chinese literature and culture centered on the idea of emotion as space, which the Chinese call "emotion-realm" (qingjing).Lam traces how the emotion-realm underwent significant transformations from the dreamscape to theatricality in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century China. Whereas medieval dreamscapes delivered the subject into one illusory mood after another, early modern theatricality turned the dreamer into a spectator who is no longer falling through endless oneiric layers but pausing in front of the dream. Through the lens of this genealogy of emotion-realms, Lam remaps the Chinese histories of morals, theater, and knowledge production, which converge at the emergence of sympathy, redefined as the dissonance among the dimensions of the emotion-realm pertaining to theatricality.The book challenges the conventional reading of Chinese literature as premised on interior subjectivity, examines historical changes in the spatial logic of performance through media and theater archaeologies, and ultimately uncovers the different trajectories that brought China and the West to the convergence point of theatricality marked by self-deception and mutual misreading. A major rethinking of key terms in Chinese culture from a comparative perspective, The Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China develops a new critical vocabulary to conceptualize history and existence. ER -