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Cityscape, Urban Nobodies And War: Modern Transformation Of Nianhua In Suzhou-Shanghai, Hua Huang

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation explores the continuities and ruptures of the nianhua practice and representations in the Suzhou-Shanghai region during the mid-18th – 19th century. It explores a city-based nianhua tradition in Jiangnan’s urban centers that supplements current scholarship, which focuses geographically on northern print centers, economically on village-based production, and thematically on religious, auspicious and moral subjects of universal value. Challenging current scholarship that treats nianhua as a folk tradition rigidly adhering to an established pictorial vocabulary and conventional symbols of religious and moral significance, this study demonstrates the adaptive and innovative energies within the nianhua industry. Taking nianhua as a …