This manuscript examines the cultural history of rural North China, as seen through
the production, circulation, content and interpretation of graphic wood-block prints, known
as nianhua. The spatial focus is on a fixed set of print producing villages on the North China
plain. The temporal focus encompasses the late 1800s through the early 1960s. In examining
how nianhua were produced and distributed in late 19th and early 20th century North China,
I show that the village print industry was prescriptive in organization. This organization was
a basic factor in delimiting form and iconography in print, since it imposed limits on the free
appropriation of texts, and directed the way in which they were read. Having accounted for
these factors, I consider how perceptions of the social, physical and ethical world were put
into print, and how print in turn configured perceptions of the world. Since print is thus
socially derived, print and its interpretation are considered in terms of responses to social
change, and the capacity of print to effect change. The environment in which village print is
structured is variously considered to be formed by the following: the physical space of the
home; late-imperial narrative structures (and their residual perpetuation beyond the decline of
the political regime); narrative structures produced through technological change and
expanded translocal experience; and state-centred reform beginning in the Republican era,
and reaching its conclusion under communism. I conclude that narratives which began as
superscriptive and authoritative structures, were appropriated and re-structured by the
specific conditions of the production, distribution, and display of print in the village.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/11139 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Flath, James A. |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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