Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/15730
Title: Official Life: Homoerotic Self-Representation and Theater in Li Ciming's 'Yuemantang Riji'
Contributor(s): Wu, Cuncun  (author)
Publication Date: 2014
DOI: 10.3868/s020-003-014-0014-7
Handle Link: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/15730
Abstract: Homoerotic play was central to the recreational culture of theatergoing from the mid-Qing to the beginning of the twentieth century, especially in Beijing. Theatergoing literati in particular played an important role in the production and reproduction of an elite, theater-based, homoerotic sub-culture, heavily investing themselves in the pursuit of social distinction. While it is important not to underestimate the importance of lower-status audiences in the popularisation of Peking opera, the literati doubtlessly considered themselves the aesthetic vanguard in terms of both the judgment of staged drama and the literary promotion of romances between themselves and the boy-actors offstage. Unlike "flower-guides" (Huapu) that circulated between friends, diaries from the period record private thoughts on the scene that would not, and could not, be expressed in public. Drawing on the diary of the influential late-Qing scholar-official Li Ciming (1830-94), I focus on the question of how an understanding of public participation entered Li's diaries, as well as examining what his self-representations have to say about Qing literati ownership of homoerotic sensibilities and spaces, which is to say, how he saw himself as presenting to others and how that self-presentation is (re-)presented in his writing.
Publication Type: Journal Article
Source of Publication: Frontiers of History in China, 9(2), p. 202-224
Publisher: Gaodeng Jiaoyu Chubanshe [Higher Education Press]
Place of Publication: China
ISSN: 1673-3525
1673-3401
Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: 200205 Culture, Gender, Sexuality
200517 Literature in Chinese
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: 440504 Gender relations
470515 Literature in Chinese
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2008: 950502 Understanding Asias Past
950203 Languages and Literature
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2020: 130702 Understanding Asia’s past
130203 Literature
Peer Reviewed: Yes
HERDC Category Description: C1 Refereed Article in a Scholarly Journal
Appears in Collections:Journal Article

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