Performing Emotion: Body, Space, and Illusion in Further Adventures on the Journey to the West (Xiyou bu 西游補)

Abstract

This thesis examines how the novella Further Adventures on the Journey to the West (Xiyou bu 西遊補), attributed to Dong Yue, externalizes and redefines qing (情, emotion) as performative acts in literary form. It extends recent discussions of the exteriority of qing by arguing that, in this novella, qing operates as a performative mechanism centered on the performative acts of the body. The study explores how the body is placed at the center of the emotional world through three spatial forms: mirrors, hexagrams, and the body itself. The first part analyzes how the novella creates a recursive, self-reflective emotional world by materializing the Buddhist metaphor of ""doubled mirrors."" Through the physical mechanism of mutual reflection, the mirrors generate thousands of independent worlds and position the self as the center of these proliferating spaces. The emotional worlds in the mirrors are also action spaces that Monkey—the novel’s protagonist—can enter and shape through performance. The second part examines how the novella structures these endlessly transformative worlds on the basis of a hexagramic system. Within this system, readers are positioned at the center as active participants who not only engage with but also contribute to the creation of the emotional worlds. The third part turns to the performative role of the body, demonstrating that in Further Adventures, emotion is not rooted in the mind but is enacted through gestures, costumes, and scripts. In line with the late Ming fascination with theatricality and embodied everyday practices, the novella positions the body as the crucial medium for generating and sustaining emotional space. By spatializing qing through doubled mirrors, hexagramic structures, and physical performance, Further Adventures redefines emotion as a performative process. This redefinition explains the late Ming literati’s fascination with the material world and reveals the power of writing and reading as a means to reconstruct the physical world through imagination.