The pragmatics of verbal and non-verbal humour in Li Kaixian’s Yixiaosan

Antonio Leggieri
Università di Palermo 

Keywords: Li Kaixian, Yuanben, teatro cinese, comunicazione non verbale, intertestualità

Chinese dramatist and bibliophile Li Kaixian’s (1502-1568) short farce Yi Xiao San (Everything dispels with a laugh) included originally six acts, of which only two survive today, titled Da Yachan (Mute meditation) and Yuanlin wumeng (Noontime dream in the garden grove), respectively. Although when put together, these two scenes amount to barely 4500 characters, they can serve as an ideal research object for a study in the pragmatics of Ming-era drama. Each part of this study concentrates on a single scene. The first part of this paper analyses Da Yachan and the pragmatics of verbal and non-verbal communication, informed by the way these characters speak and behave, as well as their egocentrism. In the second part, this paper analyses Yuanlin wumeng and the question of intertextual parody, where Li Wa and Cui Yingying, two characters coming from two famous tales of the Tang dynasty, are employed for comical purposes. The study concentrates also on how the play was received and evaluated by its author’s contemporaries. In the conclusion, this paper reflects on the function of communication without words and meaning beyond words.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Antonio Leggieri

Antonio Leggieri (Grottaglie, 1987) è docente a contratto di lingua cinese presso l'Università di Palermo, e sta completando il suo secondo dottorato presso l’Università del Salento e l’Università di Vienna; si occupa di letteratura cinese premoderna. Ha studiato traduzione e interpretariato, attività che svolge parallelamente alla ricerca, presso l’Università del Salento (2009) e l’Università Ca’Foscari (2012), e ha conseguito il primo dottorato presso l’Università di Lingua e Cultura di Pechino (2016). Ha pubblicato tre volumi di traduzioni dal cinese, e diversi articoli su prestigiose riviste. Per via della pandemia, ha trascorso a Taipei gli anni dal 2020 al 2022.

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