Online Lecture Series: Vernacular Culture of Etiquette of Late Imperial China as Represented in the Ming-Qing Novel

Introduction: Status, sources and semiotics

This lecture offers an introduction to the system and practice of social etiquette – addressing, greeting and clothing – of late imperial China as reconstructed on the basis of a range of novels of the Ming and Qing (16th-18th c.). While social etiquette constituted codes of distinct forms and licences of usage, their practice was dynamic and open to negotiation and manipulation. The novelistic representation of characters’ social interaction permits the interpretation of social etiquette in practical context.

The first session introduces the main parameters of analysis, such as the status system, age, gender, and the pragmatic frame of social interaction. It surveys the range of relevant sources, besides novels also guidebooks, encyclopaedias and brush notes, and outlines a theoretical and methodological framework, in particular a semiotic approach.

Click here to access the link to the meeting at the École Practique des Hautes Études, where Professor Altenburger is a visiting Professor in the summer semester 2023.