{"product_id":"the-spatiality-of-emotion-in-early-modern-china-9780231187947","title":"The Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLing Hon Lam gives a deeply original account of the history of emotions in Chinese literature centered on the idea of emotion as space. Tracing how the emotion-realm underwent significant transformations from the dreamscape to theatricality\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003ein sixteenth- to eighteenth-century China, this book is a major rethinking of key terms in Chinese culture.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThrough the analytical prism opened up by the concept of emotion-realm (qingjing), Lam provides a refreshing reading and interpretation of many critical thinkers, including Heidegger, Foucault, and Rancière, as well as psychology and affect theory. . . . Because of its scope of coverage, the book can serve as a reference source for rethinking Chinese literature in relation to modern critical theories. -- GUOJUN WANG, Vanderbilt University * Journal of Asian Studies *\u003cbr\u003eLam’s vaulting ambition to retell the story of just about every topic near and dear to the heart of a literary scholar: representation, fictionality, theatricality, emotion, and performance, among others. Amazingly, this tall order is pulled off via an even taller order—a counterintuitive thesis that Lam presents at the outset and defends strenuously and successfully throughout the book: that emotion is less an inside-out psychological or neuro-chemical process than an outside-in spatial process. -- Haiyan Lee * Modern Chinese Literature and Culture *\u003cbr\u003eSimultaneously engaging Chinese literary history “on its own terms” and on someone else’s terms (Michel Foucault, Martin Heidegger, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emmanuel Levinas, Slavoj Žižek, to name a few), [Lam's] \u003ci\u003eThe Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China\u003c\/i\u003e offers equally close encounters with both, all the while giving trenchant critique of the very “terms” themselves. -- Hu Ying * Critical Inquiry *\u003cbr\u003eAmbitiously drawing upon the studies of literature, philosophy, and anthropology\/ritual studies, Lam successfully brings the literary representation of emotion in premodern Chinese literature and theater to the fore, highlighting the spatialized\u003cbr\u003echaracter of emotion in both print and theatricality and the dynamics between performers and spectators. The book enormously contributes to the reader’s understanding of traditional Chinese aesthetics, its cultural production, and the\u003cbr\u003eimportance of spatialized emotion in Chinese cultural representation -- GUO WU, Allegheny College * The Chinese Historical Review *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSpatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China \u003c\/i\u003eis a heavy read with rewarding and informative rabbit holes into the development of essential aspects of Chinese drama in comparison with their European counterparts. * Asian Review of Books *\u003cbr\u003eLing Hon Lam’s book opens new dimensions for studying emotion by reaching beyond the well-trodden paths of late imperial China. -- Chen Kaijun, Brown University * Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China: From Dreamscapes to Theatricality\u003c\/i\u003e is a bold reconceptualization of fundamental questions in ontology, epistemology, and ethics. -- S. E. KILE, University of Michigan * Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature *\u003cbr\u003eLing Hon Lam has written a book that makes important contributions both to the study of early modern Chinese drama and to broader discussions of affect theory by adding Chinese studies to this scope. -- JASMINE YU-HSING CHEN, Utah State University * Asian Theatre Journal *\u003cbr\u003eLing Hon Lam’s book is a major breakthrough in early modern Chinese literary and theater studies. Lam challenges conventional wisdom that sees emotion as an expression of inner faculties, and seeks to reframe emotion as affective performativity, theatrical manifestation, and above all, spatial construct. He draws from performing arts and media studies, identifies philosophical and psychological contestations, and ponders the power of the theatrics of emotion both on the stage and in everyday life. Historically informed and theoretically provocative, Lam’s book will set a new standard for Chinese theater studies and cultural and spatial history. -- David Der-wei Wang, Harvard University\u003cbr\u003eBrilliantly written and boldly conceptualized. -- Wei Shang, Columbia University\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China \u003c\/i\u003eis a daring rethinking of emotion as it was conceptualized in early modern China. Up-ending the dominant characterization of emotions, Ling Hon Lam shows that emotions were implicitly situations of space, conceived of and perceived in spatial terms. Challenging expectations and rectifying suppositions about the most basic level of human interaction with the environment and culture, Lam elucidates questions central to the philosophy of affect and to ontology from an unprecedented comparative perspective. -- William Egginton, Johns Hopkins University\u003cbr\u003eLam argues with verve that the vocabulary of spatiality and theatricality is crucial for understanding emotions in the Chinese tradition. From the earliest formulations of the functions of poetic articulation as a space of social, political, and cosmic resonance to the logic of self-division and of being a spectator to one's emotions in Ming fiction, Lam offers new and interesting perspectives on Chinese literature. -- Wai-yee Li, Harvard University\u003cbr\u003eSounds, including words, reverberate in spaces, including the “inch-space” of the heart. Framing the history of the emotions in original and surprising ways and undoing traditional oppositions between “inside” and “outside” through attention to the spaces that nurture or limit feeling, Ling Hon Lam puts Chinese vernacular literature in a new place and gives us the sensation of belonging to a continuous, centuries-long community of spectators. This is cultural history of astonishing scope and imagination. -- Haun Saussy, University of Chicago\u003cbr\u003eA provocative, profound, and profoundly original rethinking of the history of Chinese literary thought and its literary manifestations in imperial and modern China, whose repercussions will be felt within Chinese studies and within world literary circles for a long time to come. -- Patricia Sieber, Ohio State University\u003cbr\u003eProvocative and ambitious. * China Review International *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cbr\u003ePrologue: Weather and Landscape \u003cbr\u003e1. Winds, Dreams, Theater: A Genealogy of Emotion-Realms\u003cbr\u003e2. The Heart Beside Itself: A Genealogy of Morals\u003cbr\u003e3. What Is Wrong with \u003ci\u003eThe Wrong Career\u003c\/i\u003e?: A Genealogy of Playgrounds\u003cbr\u003e4. “Not Even Close to Emotion”: A Genealogy of Knowledge\u003cbr\u003e5. Time-Space Is Emotion\u003cbr\u003eNotes\u003cbr\u003eIndex","brand":"Columbia University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49400330944855,"sku":"9780231187947","price":80.39,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780231187947.jpg?v=1730470410","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-spatiality-of-emotion-in-early-modern-china-9780231187947","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}