Content area
Full text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
THE ROLE OF THE CHOU ("CLOWN") IN TRADITIONAL CHINESE DRAMA: COMEDY, CRITICISM, AND COSMOLOGY ON THE CHINESE STAGE. By Ashley Thorpe. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007. 396 pp. Cloth $119.95.
Perhaps riding the wave of China-related books timed to exploit interest generated by the Beijing Olympics, good books about Chinese theatre in English are on the rise, yet many gaping holes about even fundamental performance elements remain. Ashley Thorpe's survey of the chou role (..., "clown") in xiqu (..., "Chinese opera") makes an important contribution, offering the first English-language analysis of one of the four main xiqu role-type categories. In this expansive work, Thorpe provides effective analysis of chou and chourelated characters in leading plays, translations of seminal theoretical writings, and wide-ranging contextual discussion helping the reader to understand why the chou, though usually listed last of the four main jingju (..., "Beijing opera") role types, is also the subject of the adage that opens and closes the study: "Without the chou, there would not be drama" (p. 284).
The book offers an introduction to the chou for Western readers and opens with a helpful foreword by John McCormick that aligns the chou with the familiar Western traditions of the court jester and the Shakespearean clown. In the introduction, Thorpe presents the structural anthropology-based model he engages throughout the study: that the chou transgresses culturally accepted moral codes as a means of publicly defining them in the minds of the audience" (p. 3). In the course of explaining his decision to use the Chinese term chou, rather than the misleading translation "clown," Thorpe provides an enticing overview of the chou's "complex mixture of fool, villain, trickster and hero." He also outlines his interdisciplinary thrust, which augments historical and literary analysis with attention to the chou in performance, particularly as a significant intersection between ritual and secular performance.
In chapter 1, Thorpe reviews historical influences from outside the direct chou lineage, covering early imperial jesters, adjutant plays, and the jing (...) role from the Song dynasty zaju (...). Numerous examples, with extended analysis of Yuan and Ming dynasty versions of Romance of the Western Chamber (..., Xixiangji ), amply support Thorpe's conclusion that the zaju jing role, which was...