The Metamorphosis of Tianxian Pei: Local Opera Under the Revolution (1949--1956) (Emersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith) - Hardcover

Idema, Wilt Lukas

9789629965938: The Metamorphosis of Tianxian Pei: Local Opera Under the Revolution (1949--1956) (Emersion: Emergent Village resources for communities of faith)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9629965933 ISBN 13: 9789629965938

Publisher: The Chinese University Press, 2014

This book is by far the best study of Huangmei Opera as social and cultural history of twentieth-century China. A regional opera of the countryside of the Anqing area, Huangmei Opera became popular all over China along with the great success of the play and the movie Married to a Heavenly Immortal in the 1950s.

Through the case of Married to a Heavenly Immortal, Idema illustrates the complicated process of rewriting and revising the play/movie in the context of a rapidly changing cultural and ideological climate during the Communist theater reform movement. As a result, the traditional theme of filial piety was turned into class struggle and the pursuit of free love. The book is enriched by a full translation of a traditional version of the play and a revised one in the 1950s, as well as selected articles by script-writers, directors, performers, and critics. These primary sources allow readers to access inside views of the contemporaries and their political and artistic concerns.

This book contributes substantially to the current scholarship on traditional Chinese opera, especially studies on Chinese theater and operatic movies in the early years of the People’s Republic of China.

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Review:

[The Metamorphosis of Tianxian Pei] provides meticulously researched, highly illuminating, and expertly translated sources on a representative case of China's radical post-1949 dramatic reform campaign against traditional theatre.--Journal of Asian Studies

About the Author:

Wilt L. Idema is a pioneering scholar and translator of Chinese literature, especially noncanonical texts of drama, fiction, poetry, and prose. He obtained his doctorate from Leiden University, where he remained on the faculty for many years. Since 2000, he has been teaching as Professor of Chinese Literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. Idema was the dean of School of Humanities at Leiden University and the director of the John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard. He has published extensively in English, German, and Chinese on topics of Chinese fiction, vernacular literature, and women’s writings, including Filial Piety and Its Divine Rewards: The Legend of Dong Yong and Weaving Maiden, with Related Texts.

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