Description
Book SynopsisTop Graduate Zhang Xie is the first extant play in the Chinese southern dramatic tradition and a milestone in the history of Chinese literature. Dating from the early fifteenth century, but possibly composed earlier, it relates the story of a talented scholar who sets off for the capital to take the imperial exams.
Trade ReviewRegina S. Llamas brings a lifetime of research and a flair for literary nuance to the translation of
Top Graduate Zhang Xie to let the reader experience why this play made for great theater. Her rendition beautifully captures the riotous fun of the original, and her introduction is a tour de force in its own right. -- Patricia Sieber, author of
Theaters of Desire: Authors, Readers, and the Reproduction of Early Chinese Song-Drama, 1300-2000 The manuscript copy of
Zhang Xie zhuangyuan is our only surviving complete example of a full-length southern play preceding the fifteenth century. It is a marvelous comedy, parodying all the conventions it employs. This sparkling translation by Llamas includes an extensive introduction that provides a detailed and critical discussion of the play and its genre. -- Wilt L. Idema, author of
The Resurrected Skeleton: From Zhuangzi to Lu XunHaving a complete English translation of
Top Graduate Zhang Xie gives students and comparatists a far more comprehensive view of this performance form than ever before. Llamas’s introduction and notes authoritatively situate the play historically, culturally, and in terms of textual creation and transmission. This is an excellent addition to the Translations from the Asian Classics series. -- Robert E. Hegel, cotranslator of
A Couple of Soles: A Comic Play from Seventeenth-Century ChinaTop Graduate Zhang Xie leaves the audience in stitches (or, as the Chinese would rather say, unstitched), while experts cherish it as a key to early Chinese theater lost in oblivion. Llamas brings these two worlds together with her vivid translation and erudite scholarship on the centennial of the play’s rediscovery. -- Ling Hon Lam, author of
The Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China: From Dreamscapes to TheatricalityRegina S. Llamas' translation reads well, and
Top Graduate Zhang Xie is a consistently entertaining play . . . This edition — with its lengthy, thorough Introduction — is a fine introduction to Chinese drama for those new to it. * Complete Review *
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
Introduction by Regina S. Llamas
Top Graduate Zhang Xie
Appendix I. Dramatis Personae
Appendix II. Synopsis of Acts
Appendix III. Roles in Acts
Notes
Index
