Postlude
Postlude
A Social Turn in Chinese Funerary Art
The modes of theatricality discerned through the cases of funerary art discussed in the chapters embody a socialized vision of death. This phenomenon, in contrast to classical modes of representing entertainment in tomb spaces prior to the eleventh century, which was primarily framed in terms of cosmological or ritual schemes, is defined as a “social turn” in funerary art. The notion of the social is used in a sense that both the theatrical content and modality manifested in the images do not merely describe “social aspects” of the funerary art, but present a paradigm in which the idea of the netherworld was projected through the frame of the society of the living as a larger whole. This phenomenon shows the sponsoring elites’ position in the changing boundaries among social groups, and also provides a new frame for understanding the increasingly flexible boundaries between disparate rituals and religious practices in middle-period China.
Keywords: Chinese, tomb, funerary art, theatricality, elite, middle-period, netherworld, socialization, boundary, religion
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.
