So far, love and desire have preoccupied scholarly inquiries into the emotional landscape in late imperial China. However, the disproportional focus diminishes the complexity and interdisciplinarity of the emotional experiences during this period. Alternatively, this dissertation seeks to contextualize the understudied emotion of anger and uses it as a different entry point into the emotional vista of late imperial China. It explores the stimuli that give rise to anger in late imperial Chinese fiction and drama, as well as the ways in which these literary works configure the regulation of that emotion. This dissertation examines a wide range of primary materials, such as deliverance plays, historical romance, domestic novels, and so forth. It situates these literary texts in reference to Quanzhen Daoist teachings, orthodox Confucian thought, and medical discourse, which prescribe the rootedness of anger in religious trials, ritual improprieties, moral dubiousness, and corporeal responses. Simultaneously, this dissertation reveals how fiction and drama contest the presumed righteousness of anger and complicate the parameters construed by the above-mentioned texts through editorial intervention, paratextual negotiation, and cross-genre adaptation. It further teases out the gendering of anger, particularly within the discourse on the four obsessions of drunkenness, lust, avarice, and qi. The emotion’s gendered dimension bears upon the approaches that literary imagination adopts to regulate anger, including patience, violence, and silence. The body of either the angry person or the target of his or her fury stands out as the paramount site upon which the diverse ways of coping with the emotion impinge. Ultimately, this dissertation enriches the current understanding of the emotional experiences in late imperial China and demonstrates anger as a prominent nodal point upon which various strands of discourse converge.

This dissertation focuses on the corpus of Zang Maoxun’s literary creations in The Collection from the Fubao Hall and investigates his involvement in the cultural activities of the Jinling Poetry Society. Unearthing how Zang and this Society, as self and community, played an instrumental role in creating and sustaining a network of dramatists and drama critics in the Jiangnan region, a careful review of his poems and prose shows the extent to which text preparation, commentary, and printing were at the center of his communications with his social circle. Moreover, this dissertation unpacks Zang’s contribution to the promotion of dramatic texts through a thorough examination of his ardent editorial work in revising Tang Xianzu’s The Four Dream Plays from the Jade Tea Hall, the epitome of the southern musical drama. By using Zang’s 1618 Diaochong guan edition of his adaptations as a focal point, this dissertation compares it with three late Ming editions of Tang’s plays printed in the dual colors of red-and-black ink. In light of their innovative editorial designs, and the varying evaluations formed in their pages about Zang’s editorial work, this dissertation reveals the importance of Zang’s adaptations in the history of The Four Dream Plays’ textual transmission, as well as the interplay between the tradition of drama criticism and the new technology of multicolor printing and consequent innovation in editorial principles.

Modern medicine is a wonderfully complex field of study, with several advances in both its theoretical and practical aspects being made everyday. In light of the pride modern physicians and scientists take in their vast knowledge, it is important to remember how far we have come throughout history. Many civilizations and cultures around the world have made essential contributions to medicine, both great and small, but no one can deny the impact both ancient Chinese and Islamic medical and alchemical practices have had on modern medicine. Qi was the central principle behind Chinese correlative thought, and it was believed to be the one thing that drove human life, as it occurred everywhere. Written texts took an increasingly more prominent role in the transmission of knowledge, and in no time at all, the educated yi ("physician") emerged. Other noteworthy contributions include an early conceptualization of the circulatory system, the development of pharmacies, the establishment of proper medical school systems, and the emergence of a set of standard hygienic practices that would allow people to take responsibility for their own health. The scholars of the Islamic Golden Age, for the most part, seemed to decry the mixing of the occult with science, and therefore sought to draw a clear distinction between alchemy (by limiting its application to the transmutation of metals) and what they deemed "real" science. Notable contributions of Arab-Islamic scientists include the pioneering of a hospital prototype, along with the development of the science of chemistry and the introduction of the experimental laboratory as the birthplace of new scientific knowledge. The important question that has yet to be answered is how extensive the connection was between the Chinese and Arab worlds. Trade was thriving during the medieval period, and so it is not wrong to assume that the exchange of goods would go hand-in-hand with the exchange of knowledge. We may never fully know exactly what happened, but further research on this topic may eventually bring an answer to light.

This thesis examines the use of language and social capital in Internet communities, specifically those communities on the Deep and Dark Web that use both Chinese and English to interact. Using both individual messages and group interactions, I have compared Chinese language patterns with those of English, as well as situations in which the two languages form a compromise, in this paper dubber "hacker creole". Examples were taken from two marketplaces, one English and one Chinese, two blogs, both Chinese, and eight forums, all of which included both Chinese and English language users. One screenshot came from an English-only forum on the Tor network, for the purpose of comparison. The analysis of language included an exploration of the development of reputations on the anonymous Internet, and how building a reputation, necessary to extended interaction in the Deep Web, leaves true anonymity out of the question for users. In addition, the system by which users build or destroy their own reputations is defined under the term social credit, instead of social capital, according to Professor David Garson's definition of social capital and foundational differences in the structure of the rules of reputation online. In addition, a comparison with modern Internet language and that of classical Chinese fiction author Shi Nai'an set a foundation for the historical precedent for underdog criminals as a society, instead of an offshoot or counterculture to society. The conclusion is one that many dystopian fantasies of the modern world deem almost inevitable. Modern economies are easily on the road to systems based on social credit, currencies that no longer take physical form. This is not necessarily a communist or capitalist situation, by necessity it does not fit into the polarized definitions now used to describe political and economic situations. People leverage their way into privileges and liberties with their reputation, and the compromise of language provides the lever.

This dissertation uncovers the contemporary impressions of Song cities represented in Song narratives and their accounts of the interplay between people and urban environments. It links these narratives to urban and societal changes in Hangzhou 杭州 (Lin’an 臨安) during the Song dynasty, cross-referencing both literary creations and historical accounts through a close reading of the surviving corpus of Song narratives, in order to shed light on the cultural landscape and social milieu of Hangzhou. By identifying, reconstructing, and interpreting urban changes throughout the “pre-modernization” transition as well as their embodiments in the narratives, the dissertation links changes to the physical world with the development of Song narratives. In revealing the emerging connection between historical and literary spaces, the dissertation concludes that the transitions of Song cities and urban culture drove these narrative writings during the Song dynasty. Meanwhile, the ideologies and urban culture reflected in these accounts could only have emerged alongside the appearance of a consumption society in Hangzhou. Aiming to expand our understanding of the literary value of Song narratives, the dissertation therefore also considers historical references and concurrent writings in other genres. By elucidating the social, spatial, and historical meanings embedded in a variety of Song narrative accounts, this study details how the Song literary narrative corpus interprets the urban landscapes of the period’s capital city through the private experiences of Song authors. Using a transdisciplinary methodology, it situates the texts within the cultural milieu of Song society and further reveals the connections of these narratives to the transformative process of urbanization in Song society.

My dissertation primarily investigates the vast literary corpus of “Qiantang meng”

錢塘夢 (A dream by Qiantang River, 1499, QTM hereafter), the earliest preserved

specimen of the Chinese vernacular story of the “courtesan” 煙粉 category, which

appears first in the mid-Hongzhi 弘治period (1488-1505). The story treats a Song

scholar Sima You 司馬槱 (?) who traveled in Qiantang and dreamed of a legendary Su

Xiaoxiao 蘇小小, a well-educated and talented courtesan who supposedly lived during

the Southern Qi 南齊 (479-520). Fundamentally, I am concerned with how and why an

early medieval five-character Chinese poem, questionably attributed to Su Xiaoxiao

herself, developed across the later period of pre-modern Chinese literary history into an

extensive repertoire that retold the romantic stories in a variety of distinctive literary

genres: poems, lyric songs, essays, dramas, ballads, vernacular stories, miscellaneous

notes, biographical sketches, etc. The thematic interest of my research is to evaluate how

travel and dream experiences interactively form a mode whose characteristics could help

develop a clearer understanding of biji 筆記 (miscellaneous notes) as a genre which is

representational and presentational, exhibiting a metadramatic textual pastiche that

collects both fact and fiction. The timeless popularity of QTM storylines reflect and

express the trope of the “travel and dream” experience. This is something of a “living”

complex of elements through which a textual community in later generations can

reconstruct their authorial and cultural identity by encountering, remembering and

reproducing those elements in the form of autobiographical and biographical expression

of a desiring subject. Travel and dream experiences are cross-referenced, internally

dialogical, mutually infiltrating, and even metaphorically interchangeable. They are

intertwined to create a liminal realm of pastiches in which we can better examine how the

literati in the Yuan (1271-1368), Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties

formed their own views about a past which shapes and is shaped by both collective and

individual memory. Such retellings both construct and challenge our understanding of the

complex networks of lexical and thematic exchange in the colloquial literary landscape

during the late imperial period.

The Shuowen jiezi 說文解字 [Explaining depictions of reality and analyzing graphs of words] (100 AD), written by Xu Shen 許慎of Eastern Han dynasty, is known as the first comprehensive dictionary for Chinese characters. However, the earliest complete edition of the Shuowen available today is the Songkanben 宋刊本 (Woodblock printed edition from the Song dynasty). As a result, Songkanben is employed as the primary source in most studies on the Shuowen conducted by scholars after the Song dynasty. In 1982, the discovery of Tangxieben Shuowen mubu canjuan 唐寫本說文木部殘卷 (The incomplete juan under wood classifier of the Shuowen written in manuscript form in the Tang), shed light on a new angle of view in examining the Shuowen, mostly developed from Songkanben. In this paper, after an introduction on the Songkanben by Xu brothers, as well as the discovery and dating of the incomplete manuscript form of Shuowen from Tang, a comparative study between the Songkanben and Tangxieben of the Shuowen from five aspects: order of entries, the appearance of the Small Seal script of a few entries, the explanation of the meaning of some characters, the graphic analyze and the fanqie 反切 phonetic notation for some entries. The hypothesis presented in this thesis is that Tangxieben, with its antiquarian value, advantages and features, though not older for sure, may belong to an older tradition. And it suggests that there is a scholarship of the Shuowen during the Tang. And Xiao Xuben 小徐本by Xu Kai 徐鍇 (920-74), from some specific aspects in the comparison, tends to be closer to Tangxieben compared with Da Xuben 大徐本by Xu Xuan 徐鉉 (917-92). Consequently, as the original text of the Shuowen is not available today and what we have studied on the Shuowen basically is based on the editions by Xu brothers, it would be reasonable to keep this in mind, and refer to different editions of the Shuowen and critically examine them in philological studies related to it when apply and study the Shuowen nowadays.

Li He (790-816), an outstanding poet full of literary talent in

classical Chinese poem history, his poignant words, incredible literary construction, nether artistic conception and nuanced peculiar poem style owned him the reputation of “ghostly, demonic genius” 鬼才. Scholars demonstrated that his ghostly and demonic style has much to do with the special imagery and allusion in his poetry. However, this kind of ghostly appeal of literature exactly have much to do with the large quantity of sensory vocabulary that the poet is expert in using in his poems, which evokes resonance from the readers/audiences. Li He fuses visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and tactile sensation in his poems, building up his special writing style, evoking and creating a sensorial space for readers. The thesis concentrates on analyzing the sensory vocabulary in Li He’s poetry, sonic depiction in particular, which are rarely discussed before, based on which making further conclusion about the artistic conception and the special style of Li He’s poetry.

Stories concerning Minamoto no Yoshitsune, one of Japan's best known and most tragic heroes, are numerous and varied. From his birth to his death, nearly every episode of Yoshitsune's life has been retold in war tales, histories, and plays. One of the major and most influential retellings of the Yoshitsune legend is found in Gikeiki, a text from the fifteenth century. This study looks at the early period of the legend and specifically focuses on the Kibune episode, when Yoshitsune lived and trained at Kurama Temple. It provides a new translation of the episode as told in Gikeiki and discusses the different portrayals of Yoshitsune within the Gikeiki textual lineage and in previous and subsequent works of literature. The thesis also takes a brief look at the development of Gikeiki texts; it shows the malleability of the Yoshitsune legend and the Gikeiki text and discusses the implications that this malleability has on our understanding of the place of Gikeiki and the legend of Yoshitsune within the medieval Japanese cultural consciousness.

Many researchers have pointed out that sentence complexity plays an important role in language maturity. Using cohesive devices is a critical method to composing complicated sentences. Several grammatical researchers give cohesive devices different definitions and categories in the perspective of pure linguistics, yet little is known about the Chinese learners' acquisition situations of cohesive devices in the field of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (TCFL). Combined with these definitions and pedagogical theories, the acquisition situations of four grammatical features of cohesive devices and eleven logical relations are discussed in this thesis. This thesis expects that through discovering different features of cohesive devices among different student levels, educators of Chinese will gain a more comprehensive understanding of the acquisition orders and features of conjunctive devices. In this study, I examine the teaching orders of cohesive devices in selected textbooks from first-year Chinese through fourth-year Chinese. Three groups of students were required to complete two essays based on the same topics and prompts. Twenty-eight valid writing samples are examined in total, including ten writing samples from fourth-year students, another ten from third-year students, and eight from second-year students. The results show that there are no obvious differences among the three levels of students in their use of certain grammatical features and logical relations of cohesive devices. Students in these three levels have difficulty understanding how to connect paragraphs together fluently and accurately in their compositions. Pedagogical implications include some suggestions about designing instructional writing assignments in order to give more clearly pedagogical instructions for teaching cohesive devices. In addition, comprehensible directions that explain which logical relations should be taught every academic year are proposed.