Reframing the Mirror: The Changing Paratexts of the Chinese Woodblock-Printed Illustrated Book, Dijian tushuo

Reframing the Mirror: The Changing Paratexts of the Chinese Woodblock-Printed Illustrated Book, Dijian tushuo

Julia Murray - Professor of History of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Friday, September 29, 2006 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm
Room 202, Henry R. Luce Hall See map
34 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 6511

The presentation will discuss various ways that the French literary critic Gerard Genette’s concept of the “paratext” can be productively used to analyze the evolution of this late 16th c. compendium of illustrated instructional tales. Professor Murray will examine selected examples, from the initial submission of a manuscript edition to the Wanli emperor in 1573 to recent mass-produced photo-offset editions for contemporary audiences, in order to demonstrate the ways that modifications in elements such as prefaces, size, picture design, quality of printing, and other elements provide information about the purposes and significance of each version.

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China