Description
Book SynopsisS. E. Kile argues that Li Yu’s cultural experimentation draws attention to the materiality of particular media forms, expanding the scope of early modern media by interweaving books, buildings, and bodies.
Trade ReviewWith its incisive analysis, eloquent writing, and integrated use of theories, this book is of great value for scholars in literature, print culture, and material culture. * H-Material-Culture *
A brilliant new conceptualization of the maverick Li Yu as entrepreneur, designer, playwright, and multimedia specialist. Kile’s daring, astute study of this most original seventeenth-century Chinese writer grabs you from page one. A true tour de force. -- Judith Zeitlin, author of
The Phantom Heroine: Ghosts and Gender in Seventeenth-Century Chinese LiteratureLi Yu had a career as full of twists as his stories are. Taking media innovation as the thread that connects Li Yu’s many activities, this study opens new windows in his floating towers and adds arias to his silent operas. -- Haun Saussy, author of
The Making of Barbarians: Chinese Literature and Multilingual AsiaIn this important and absorbing study of Li Yu, Kile shows how thinking through media in its multiple forms—print culture, the sights and sounds of the theater, spatial constructs, the human body—yields fresh insights into early modern China. -- Wai-yee Li, author of
The Promise and Peril of Things: Literature and Material Culture in Late Imperial ChinaTowers in the Void provides authoritative new insights into Li Yu’s writings based on a broad examination of his corpus. Integrating insightful and innovative readings of Li Yu’s creative works with his prescriptions on garden design and lengthy musings, Kile offers a new and productive approach to the study of Li Yu that can inspire other such innovative analyses of late imperial Chinese literature. -- Robert Hegel, cotranslator of
A Couple of Soles: A Comic Play from Seventeenth-Century ChinaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Conventions
Introduction
Part I: Textual Media1. Cultural Entrepreneurship and Woodblock Print
2. Building with Words
Part II: Spatial Media3. Fictional Space in
Twelve Towers4. Garden Space in
Leisure NotesPart III: Corporeal Media5. Remodeling Fictional Bodies
6. Remodeling Real Bodies in
Leisure NotesEpilogue
Appendix: Li Yu’s Oeuvre
Notes
Works Cited
Index
