Title

Literati on Stage, Actors in Office: "Mobile" Theatre Troupes and Social Imaginaries in Mid-Qing Novels

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409~445

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Abstract

In premodern China, literati and actors lived distinct lives at opposing ends of the social hierarchy; however, the two frequently interacted and even transformed into each other in eighteenth century literature and culture. This article examines three mid-Qing novels—The Lantern at the Crossroads (Qilu deng 歧路燈), The Scholars (Rulin waishi 儒林外史), and Idle Talk (Guwangyan 姑妄言)—to analyze the multiple ways in which literatus–actor relationships were imagined. Actors entered literati households and assumed kinship roles, unsettling lineage-based family structure; literati were likened to actors, exposing class anxieties and unstable social identities; actors intervened in local politics, which highlighted the rigid nature of literati shaped by Confucian ritual training. This article argues that these encounters, confrontations, and transformations, were not merely narrative devices but instead served as imaginative resources through which mid-Qing literati constructed self-identities and responded to broader political and social transformations.