{"title":"Books by Wai-yee Li","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780231208963","title":"A Topsy–Turvy World – Short Plays and Farces from the Ming and Qing Dynasties","description":"Playwriting in many forms flourished during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Shorter theatrical genres in particular offered playwrights opportunities for experimentation with both dramatic form and social critique. Despite their originality and wit, these short plays have been overshadowed by the lengthy masterpieces of the southern drama tradition.   A Topsy-Turvy World presents English translations of shorter sixteenth-to-eighteenth-century plays, spotlighting a lesser-known side of Chinese drama. Satirical and often earthy, these mostly one-act plays depict deceit, dissembling, reversed gender roles, and sudden upending of fortunes. With zest and humor, they portray henpecked husbands, supercilious and lustful monks, all-too-human sage kings, disgruntled officials, and overreaching young scholars. These plays provide a glimpse of Chinese daily life and mores even as they question or subvert the boundaries of social, moral, and political order.   Each translation is preceded by a short introduction that describes the play’s author, context, formal qualities, and textual history. A Topsy-Turvy World offers a new view of a significant period in the development of the Chinese theatrical tradition and provides insight into the role of drama as cultural critique.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56227795763573,"sku":"9780231208963","price":150.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780231208963_3f6435db-11c1-4b28-afbb-78b588df722f.jpg?v=1786012670"},{"product_id":"9780231214834","title":"The Confucius Chronicles","description":"Our ideas about Confucius come from the stories told about him. He often appears as the great sage of ancient China, handing down timeless moral precepts to his disciples and to posterity. Yet over the course of twenty-five centuries, Confucius has meant many different things to different people, representing varied views on political order, ethical behavior, and personal well-being.   This book explores enduring narratives about Confucius, shedding light on his role as a symbol of cultural ideals and a fulcrum of ideological debates across eras. Wai-yee Li translates and provides commentary on a wide range of key texts, examining how Confucius’s legacy was interpreted in different historical moments. Beginning with the canonical account by the historian Sima Qian, she canvasses Daoist and Legalist writings from the Warring States, a ballad about a homicidal Confucius from the Tang dynasty, an eighteenth-century anthology of jokes, modern writers such as Lu Xun, and contemporary rap music, among others. Focusing on how these stories are told, Li identifies continuities, ruptures, and unexpected connections in the representations of Confucius and considers the questions they raise. Suitable for a range of courses, this book offers new ways to understand Chinese cultural and intellectual history through Confucius and his transformations.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56367849079157,"sku":"9780231214834","price":28.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"ideal-matches","title":"Ideal Matches","description":"What is authenticity? What is true love? How do we recognize a real work of art? Ideal Matches, Li Yu's comic masterpiece from the 1650's--here translated for the first time into English--explores these perennial questions. The play follows two luminaries who, weary of constant requests for their work, seek \"ghost artists\" who can help them field requests for their paintings and calligraphy. They encounter uncannily brilliant forgeries of their works done by two women-a courtesan and a woman from a poor family. Multiple plot twists involving cross-dressing, impersonation, and mistaken identity propel the story toward its happy ending, or its \"ideal matches.\" Set in the early seventeenth century, the characters are based on historical late Ming cultural figures who would have been well-known to Li Yu's contemporaries. Here, they are recast with humor and poignancy as figures caught between the real and the fake, aspiration and external judgment, artistic passion and the pressures of the marketplace. The play embraces the structure of romantic comedy while overturning assumptions about the genre. True love and economic calculations intertwine; counterfeit artworks reveal deep truths; and the most perfect unions emerge between unlikely subjects--artists and their forgers. With wit and incisive cultural insight, Ideal Matches asks probing questions about agency, authenticity, true love, and talent--questions that are just as important today as they were in seventeenth-century China.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57680044982645,"sku":"9780197804582","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-wai-yee-li.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}