Gendered Dharma Sermons: the Parodies of Buddhist Rituals in a Qing Play about Shrew Taming
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Abstract
This article investigates how Buddhist notions of gender were represented and reshaped in traditional Chinese theater through a close reading of an eighteenth-century play entitled Fuhutao (Stratagem of taming the tigress). The play includes three episodes of mock Dharma sermons delivered by Guanyin Bodhisattva, the shrew, and the shrew-tamer, respectively. The playwright unconventionally chose to gender his Guanyin character as male in order to establish the religious authority of masculine supremacy. He also creatively turned the concept of the âgreat hero,â a symbol for the spiritual heroism of buddhas, into a trope for male dominance over the female. Unlike the playwrightâs original conception, stage adaptations of the play from the late Qing to the early twentieth century often spotlighted the shrewâs sermon on subduing husbands, a scene that had both theatrical appeal and potentially subversive power. This study argues that Buddhist ideas about gender and the formalities of ritual provided writers and actors space to experiment with new ways to dramatize male-female relationships â innovations which might both consolidate as well as challenge the patriarchal social order.
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Gendered Dharma Sermons: the Parodies of Buddhist Rituals in a Qing Play about Shrew Taming
In: NAN NÃSearch for other papers by Mengxiao Wang in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This article investigates how Buddhist notions of gender were represented and reshaped in traditional Chinese theater through a close reading of an eighteenth-century play entitled Fuhutao (Stratagem of taming the tigress). The play includes three episodes of mock Dharma sermons delivered by Guanyin Bodhisattva, the shrew, and the shrew-tamer, respectively. The playwright unconventionally chose to gender his Guanyin character as male in order to establish the religious authority of masculine supremacy. He also creatively turned the concept of the âgreat hero,â a symbol for the spiritual heroism of buddhas, into a trope for male dominance over the female. Unlike the playwrightâs original conception, stage adaptations of the play from the late Qing to the early twentieth century often spotlighted the shrewâs sermon on subduing husbands, a scene that had both theatrical appeal and potentially subversive power. This study argues that Buddhist ideas about gender and the formalities of ritual provided writers and actors space to experiment with new ways to dramatize male-female relationships â innovations which might both consolidate as well as challenge the patriarchal social order.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 590 | 244 | 12 |
| Full Text Views | 39 | 8 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 107 | 26 | 0 |
