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A Couple of Soles: A Comic Play from Seventeenth-Century China
Contributor(s): Shen, Jing (Translator), Yu, Li (Author), Hegel, Robert E. (Translator)

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 ISBN: 0231193556     ISBN-13: 9780231193559
Publisher: Columbia University Press
OUR PRICE: $26.25  

Binding Type: Paperback - See All Available Formats & Editions
Published: December 2019
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Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Drama | Asian - General
- Literary Collections | Asian - Chinese
- Literary Criticism | Asian - General
Dewey: 895.124
LCCN: 2019025146
Series: Translations from the Asian Classics
Physical Information: 1" H x 5.5" W x 8.5" L (0.95 lbs) 360 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - Asian
- Cultural Region - Chinese
Features: Bibliography
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
A Couple of Soles is a classic comedic romance by the seventeenth-century playwright Li Yu. Tan Chuyu, a poor young scholar, falls in love with the beautiful actress Liu Miaogu. He joins her family's acting troupe, and, in plays within the play, romance ensues. After Liu's family attempts to marry her off to a local country squire, she performs a famous scene in which a heroine drowns herself--and then jumps off the stage into a river, followed by Tan. The local river deity rescues the lovers from death by transforming them into a pair of soles. Li balances their romance with the adventures of a retired upright official involving banditry, bribery, and mistaken identity--and who nets and shelters the two fish when they regain human form.

Written at a time when China was beginning to recover from the cataclysmic Ming-Qing dynastic transition, A Couple of Soles displays Li's biting wit as well as his reflections on the concerns of his age, including the dangers of administrative service and the role of theater in society. The play combines witty wordplay and caustic satire with a strong emphasis on traditional moral values. The first major comedy from late imperial China to appear in English translation, A Couple of Soles provides an unparalleled view of the theater in seventeenth-century China. A general introduction and a detailed appendix shed further light on the play and its context.

Contributor Bio(s): Shen, Jing: - Jing Shen (Wash-U PhD) is professor of Chinese language and literature at Eckerd College. Shen's publications include Playwrights and Literary Games in Seventeenth-Century China: Plays by Tang
Xianzu, Mei Dingzuo, Wu Bing, Li Yu, and Kong Shangren (Lexington, 2010) and articles in CHINOPERL, Ming Studies, The China Review, and Asian Theatre Journal.Hegel, Robert E.: - Robert E. Hegel (Columbia PhD) is Liselotte Dieckmann Professor of Comparative Literature in Arts and Sciences and Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at Washington University, St. Louis. His publications include Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China (Stanford, 1998) and The Novel in Seventeenth Century China (Columbia, 1981) as well asthe translated volume Idle Talk Under the Bean Arbor: A Seventeenth-Century Chinese Collection (Washington, 2017) and numerous edited collections, book chapters, and articles.
 
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