This paper provides an in-depth study of Morokoshi meishō zue, the only substantial Japanese illustrated book on the cultural geography of contemporaneous Qing China (1644 – 1911) produced during the ...Edo period (1603 – 1868). By analysing its appropriations of valuable and recent Chinese publications, insertion of Osaka-Kyoto identities, and production networks, this paper situates the book in the late Tokugawa context of social control and deviance. Examining the cultural connections surrounding the book’s production and consumption, this paper also proposes a revaluation of the art-historical cliché of the Japanese literati and reveals the social and political significances of their promotion of Chinese art and culture in early modern Japan.
Under the background of contemporary cultural protection and dynamic inheritance, the interpretation and re-expression of the artistic connotations of Chinese literati paintings have become the main ...direction of heritage research. Digital technology and multimedia expression have become important means of cultural expression and transmission. Most Chinese literati paintings are ink paintings, and the particularity of ink painting makes it difficult to decompose and extract the screen content by simple means, which has caused difficulties in digitization, re-expression, and public interpretation to some extent. To solve this problem, a new robust multi-view (M-V) fuzzy clustering algorithm is proposed for image segmentation of Chinese literati paintings to achieve effective decomposition and extraction of ancient paintings. Through the effective decomposition and extraction of literati paintings, the electronic and digital transformation and preservation of literati paintings can be realized. This kind of preservation method, more than traditional scanning, can preserve the artistry of literati paintings, which is of great value for the re-expression and dissemination of cultural heritage. Experiments on noise-added Brodatz texture images show that the proposed algorithm is insensitive to noise and has good robustness. Experiments on real Chinese literati paintings show that the proposed algorithm can effectively segment literati paintings and further realize their decomposition and extraction.
The paper focuses on the direct Bible quotations that the anonymous translator and Evagrius of Antioch rendered from Greek into Latin as part of their versions of the Life of Antony, each in his own ...way. Did the anonymous translator use any of the existing fourth-century Latin translations of the Bible to translate the biblical quotations he found in the Greek original, or did he translate them himself, without recourse to translations already available? Which version of the Bible did he use when translating the biblical quotations, in Latin or in Greek? What does the anonymous translator’s “literal” and “low-register” style tell us about the translator? Was his non-idiomatic Latin a choice, “Christian” Latin, or rather a limitation in translating into Latin as his target language? On the other hand, what does Evagrius’ “high” and stylistically sophisticated and improved Latin tell us about Evagrius? Whom does he write for, and what do his readers expect from him? This paper aims at answering these questions.
Experts in the field of architecture and landscape design have reached a broad consensus that the Chinese literati garden is a type of built environment that seamlessly integrates architecture and ...landscape with exceptional cultural, artistic, and historical values. However, previous site-based studies have often leaned towards either a subjective description of the experience or a technical analysis of the space. Both approaches may result in oversimplified interpretations of the Chinese literati garden, failing to adequately capture its fundamental spatial-experiential structure.
This paper aims to address this challenge through the lens of phenomenology. Specifically, it examines an essential spatial-experiential structure—the FS-FW structure—embedded within the Chinese literati garden. The term FS-FW structure, as meticulously established in this paper, refers to the spatial-experiential structure formed by the relationship between one's experience within a single “focusing space” (a space built for visitors to linger and mindfully appreciate their surroundings) and that within its “focused world” (a phenomenal world of surroundings generated during visitors' stay in the focusing space).
Using the Master of the Nets Garden as a case study, this paper investigates how the FS-FW structure shapes one's experiences within a literati garden and explores several important mechanisms related to it. A variety of methods are employed throughout, with GIS-based spatial-visual analysis being particularly significant. The case study leads to a series of original results, including some significant mechanisms, that explain how Chinese literati gardens shape visitors' experiences. This paper concludes that the FS-FW structure is a key factor responsible for shaping a continuous, rich, and clearly formulated experience within the Chinese literati garden.
The essay presents a historical narrative about the way tea and coffeehouses in post-partition, post-colonial Delhi were inhabited, embraced, used, celebrated and fought for by a couple of ...generations of migrant Hindi intellectuals in the middle decades of the last century.
Adda-like, but more public and open, the space helped them connect with the city, otherwise an alien and distant entity mired in power and busy with the agenda of nation-building. It is here that they set up networks with their like-minded others to find a virtual home away from home. It is long past its glory, but its affective appeal as a socially convivial, creatively stimulating, and politically vibrant, albeit gendered, public place is nostalgically testified in the abundant testimonials offered by its more articulate regular visitors. The space, what happens there, and to it, thus emerges as a metaphor for changing times the city has witnessed through the decades.
•Creating the context: Delhi after Independence/Partition and migration of refugees. Enthusiasm for the capital of a new India; Struggle of starting life a new.•Tea/coffeehouses emerge as a home away from home. But do they like the city and the power it wields and represents? Critiques.•Thick description of what the ‘virtuosi’ do here. A flavour of their intellectual interactions, debates, modes of socialisation and worldly exchanges. A place of hospitality, solidarity, networking, mentoring.•A gendered Space? Quite so.•A particular conjuncture in history when the place gets transformed as a hub of an urban social movement against price rise. A glimpse of the contemporary moment.
Commercialization in the Ming and Qing dynasties caused profound changes to China's conventional hierarchies in multiple respects. This article examines literati and popular writings about drinking ...between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries as competing views of good taste for alcoholic beverages emerged among scholars. Many prominent writers, officials, and connoisseurs developed a taste for alcoholic drinks, such as the distilled spirits that were often associated with the non-elite classes. Some literati even operated breweries and distilleries. By focusing on the works of connoisseurs like Yuan Mei, I argue that ordinary people's taste for food and drinks helped constitute Ming-Qing literati elites' identities and sensibilities. Contrary to historians Craig Clunas and Wu Renshu, who argue that the dichotomy of literati elegance and non-elite vulgarity preserved social hierarchies, this article presents a more contested history of taste formation in late imperial society and questions the position of literati taste in broader sociocultural transformations.
The Shenxian daohua ju of the Yuan dynasty closely relates to Daoism. However, the essence and boundary of these two concepts have not been clearly defined and delineated in the existing research, ...which leads to confusion in analyzing their relationship. This article provides methodologies for defining Shenxian daohua ju and Daoism. Based on the extant Yuan zaju texts and confined to the themes of seclusion, deliverance, and ascending to immortality, we enumerate the particular dramatic texts of Shenxian daohua ju. Then, we limit the objects of the concept of Daoism to specific Daoist sects in history and highlight that the criteria for determining whether a Shenxian Dao (Celestial Being Sect) belongs to Daoism are provided by the officially recognized Daozang (Daoist canon). According to the above understanding of these two concepts, we explore their relationship from the following perspectives. First, in terms of composition subjects, these include the frustrated Confucian literati, the vassal Kings, and the imperial literati; the Shenxian daohua ju written by frustrated literati in the Yuan dynasty is not the embodiment of Daoist doctrines as some of the researchers conclude. Second, in light of the “aesthetic distinction”, we can also take Shenxian daohua ju as pure literary works and interpret these dramas from their literary structures and rhythmical forms. Third, from the perspective of the literary tradition, although with the adoption of Daoist themes, the Shenxian daohua ju of the Yuan dynasty still belongs to the Confucian poetic tradition. Its negation of secular life and advocacy of the ideal world follow the Confucian poetic teachings of “criticizing those above”. Objectively speaking, due to the influence of Daoism, the Shenxian daohua ju with the Daoist themes breaks through the taboo topics prescribed in Confucian literary principles to a certain extent and enriches Chinese literature.
El presente articulo examina los discursos sobre América transmitidos en China por misioneros jesuitas entre los siglos XVI y XVIII. Este busca demostrar el modo en que misioneros y sus colaboradores ...chinos crearon sus informaciones sobre el continente con el fin de apoyar su agenda política y misional. El texto comienza con una descripción de las estrategias de la misión en China y su relación con la producción geográfica sino-jesuita, para luego analizar la conexión de las informaciones sino-jesuitas sobre América con los planes de la misión. Se concluye que las representaciones sobre la geografía, gentes e historia de América reflejan tres intereses interrelacionados: atraer la atención de los literatos chinos; resaltar el alto desarrollo de la civilización europea; y comunicar mensajes religiosos.
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