A Topsy-Turvy World - (Translations from the Asian Classics) by Wilt Idema & Wai-Yee Li & Stephen H West (Paperback)

About the Book

A Topsy-Turvy World presents English translations of shorter late Ming and early Qing plays. Satirical and often earthy, these mostly one-act plays provide a glimpse of Chinese daily life and mores even as they question or subvert the boundaries of social, moral, and political order.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

Zaju plays of the Ming and Qing dynasties have long been a neglected area both in China and elsewhere. For that reason, this anthology is a timely translation. It provides new materials not only for general readers interested in premodern Chinese zaju plays but also for students and scholars to engage in further studies of the genre.--Hongchu Fu, author of Chinese Drama

A brilliant collection of rare and original works that provides a broad and varied view of Chinese performance traditions. The dominant leitmotif of these translations is the ingenuity and audacity with which writers subvert convention while questioning the sociopolitical order.--Regina Llamas, translator of Top Graduate Zhang Xie: The Earliest Extant Chinese Southern Play

A splendid expansion of the canon of traditional Chinese drama translations--the short plays offer a riotous deep dive into a world of laughter, while the scholarly commentary succinctly explores some of the fault lines of the early modern imagination.--Patricia Sieber, coeditor of How to Read Chinese Drama in Chinese A Language Companion

This treasure box of eleven short plays, most available in English for the first time, will delight anyone interested in early modern Chinese drama, culture, and society. Ranging from Buddhist charades to human puppet shows, from sword dances to drag masquerades, these thematically diverse and inventive plays are admirably translated with erudition and panache.--Judith Zeitlin, author of The Phantom Heroine: Ghosts and Gender in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Literature

About the Author

Wilt L. Idema is professor emeritus of Chinese literature at Harvard University.

Wai-yee Li is the 1879 Professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard University.

Stephen H. West is Louis Agassiz Emeritus Professor of Chinese, University of California, Berkeley, and Emeritus Foundation Professor of Chinese at Arizona State University.