Publication Title
Exploring Written Artefacts
Document Type
Book Chapter - Open Access
Department or Program
Asian Studies
Publication Date
11-22-2021
Abstract
Zidishu is a genre of sung verse narrative that flourished in northern China between the mid-eighteenth and the end of the nineteenth centuries. This article examines the earliest dated manuscript containing a text in this genre, copied in 1815 in Beijing, titled Yu Boya shuaiqin xie zhiyin zidishu (Yu Boya smashes his zither to mourn a friend, a youth book). The preface, appendix, marginal and chapter comments added to the main text by the copyist reveal him to have been a fashionable and erudite reader, whose diverse literary interests offer insights into zidishu's early audience and the ways in which elite readers engaged with popular texts. © 2021 Zhenzhen Lu, published by De Gruyter.
Recommended Citation
Lu, Z. 2021. "Touched by a Tale of Friendship: An Early Nineteenth-Century Zidishu Manuscript." In J. Quenzer (Ed.), Exploring Written Artefacts: Objects, Methods, and Concepts (pp. 1099-1122). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-054
Copyright Note
This is the publisher's version of the work. This publication appears in Bates College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution.
Required Publisher's Statement
Original version is available from the publisher at: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-054