3 Review(s)

An important topic in the study of Chinese culture, past or present, is that of the "boundary". In this book the authors investigate the meaning of the boundary as metaphor and paradox, as threshold and interface across the whole spectrum of Chinese art and society. The essays range from early politics and society to contemporary public and private discourse; from the creation of a literary canon to the positioning of individuals in dynastic time; from the sacred spaces of medieval Buddhism to the public spaces in today's Peking Opera; and from the obsessive construction of an afterlife in the tombs of the 1st century AD to the intangible surfaces of self in 14th-century painting.