Staging China: Jesuit Theater and the End of an Empire - (Studies in the History of Christianity in East Asia) by Anthony E Clark (Hardcover)

About the Book

This is the first book to center its analysis on Jesuit drama in China, confronting how the Society of Jesus' Baroque impulses were manifest in China's Jesuit mission areas.

Book Synopsis

This book represents the first monograph study of Jesuit religious theater in China and its connections to the commemoration of the Society's martyrs of the late Qing. It considers the Society's efforts to rehabilitate the Western imagination of China and the Jesuit aim of stirring emotional responses to stage performances that inculcate Catholic and Western sensibilities.
By connecting the religious underpinnings of the Spiritual Exercises to the sumptuous Baroque expressions of Jesuit drama performed on China's stages, this important work explores an entirely new area of research that weaves together several modes of analysis - visual, cultural, and nationalistic.