| This dissertation describes the consolidation and transformation of Peking opera into a symbol of Chinese national culture during the late Qing and republican era. In this period, Peking opera became the most popular and economically developed form of urban stage entertainment in China and its actors, playwrights, and patrons were central figures in the popular imagination and cultural politics of the day. As a diverse group these actors and their allies worked within the context of a rapidly changing urban and national culture to overcome social and political discrimination and elevate their art to the level of internationally recognized cultural respectability. In the process, Peking opera was in many ways on the leading edge of modern transformations and experimentations in creating new meanings for popular theater, new dynamics of urban sociability, and new representations of gender, while at the same time serving as a symbol for a traditional culture that many sensed was receding under the pressures of modernization. The dissertation attempts to explicate this apparent contradiction by analyzing the linkages between the genre's economic organization and changing conceptualizations of its aesthetic characteristics. |
