Staging Talent in Urban Arenas
Staging Talent in Urban Arenas
“Staging Talent in Urban Arenas” focuses on examination lore in the latter half of the Tang, which shows that the urban space of Chang’an allows candidates to define themselves by vying for recognition outside the examination ground proper. For the precareer man of letters, an important aspect of establishing oneself was the successful demonstration of talent in the public eye. This necessitated a series of presentations of literary talent—both on paper and in person—to intervening parties, and to the even larger community of beholders whose consensus could become suasive. Narratives of urban spectacles and public competition intimate an invisible crowd of onlookers, whose presence helped to cement (or undermine) the reputation of the neophytes.
Keywords: literary talent, urban space, evaluation, spectacle, reputation, competition, civil service examination, performance, spectator
Hawaii Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.